Essay on Embezzlement
This is a criminal activity which involves the conversion, to his own use, of funds or property by a servant, an employee, an agent, or any person who is entrusted all these (i.e., funds and property) by other person, say, master, employer, etc. Donald Cressay (1953: 19) has defined embezzlement as “the criminal violation of financial trust”.
This definition is, however, narrower. The broader definition considers those people as embezzlers who keep for themselves the goods that are in their legal possession by virtue of their roles as bailees for their employers/masters/other people.
This crime (embezzlement) also includes selling/giving things in one’s possession to some other person and pocketing the money received. With the expansion of commerce, trade, banking and business pursuits, the financial interests of the business community and employers necessitated additional protection under the criminal law because of which the existing laws were modified and their scope extended.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It is said that embezzlement by employees exceeds robberies. It has also been found that embezzlers generally belong to the middle income groups and rarely have a criminal record prior to their embezzling activities.
They rarely think of themselves as criminals. One study revealed that the typical male embezzler is 35-45 years of age, married, and has one or two children. The main cause of his embezzlement is that either he has a daughter to marry, or construct a house of his own, or send his son for higher education, or has gambling habit. The number of female embezzlers is very small.