With the crisis in corporate America reaching an ever more fevered pitch and an citizen population increasingly fed up with the greed of large corporations, Ralph Nader and other advocates today outlined a series of fundamental corporate reforms to protect workers, taxpayers, shareholders, pensions, and restore confidence in our economy.

“It is time for the action call – fundamental corporate reform – to ring throughout the land,” Nader said. “We want millions of Americans to work with us and other groups to show these giant company bosses what responsibility, accountability, restitution and just verdicts must be placed upon them.”

Nader called on Congress to enacted tougher laws, including greater and timely disclosure laws, a variety of criminal and civil actions, prohibitions on conflicts of interests, an end to corporate loans to insiders, and an end to the “growing vogue of renouncing U.S. corporate citizenship while retaining its benefits,” among other reforms.

He also called for actions to greatly empower shareholders, remove obstacles that keep aggrieved parties from having their day in court, and for the establishment of a national commission to study the role of corporate power and its impact on our political economy.

Nader additionally blamed Congress and President Bush for not taking real action and called on the President and the Justice Department to put the corporate criminals in jail.

“Words are used as substitutes for deeds,” Nader said. “People want action…They want to see the corporate crooks pay back their huge ill-gotten gains, convicted, and sent to jail”

Nader was joined by other Cynthia Williams, associate professor of Law at University of Illinois College of Law, who spoke about the need to extend SEC disclosure laws to the environment and social issues.

"The revelations of hidden debt or inflated profits that seem to be bringing down company after company have fueled calls for sweeping reforms by Congress and at the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Williams said. “One issue that has so far received little notice relates to disclosure of corporate environmental and social information. As the drumbeat for sweeping SEC reform sounds louder every day, it is critical to recognize just how out of date SEC disclosure standards and enforcement have been on environmental and social issues.”

Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, spoke on why a Senate accounting reform bill (S. 2673) by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) does not go far enough.

Tom Devine, legislative director of the Government Accountability spoke on the importance of giving corporate whistleblowers the legal protections that will allow them to speak out without fear. “Throughout the Enron hearings, legislators of both parties rhetorically lionized whistleblowers and chastised those who violated their “duty” by remaining silent,” Devine said. “It is time to add genuine free speech rights to the rhetoric, which rings cynically hollow to someone fired and facing bankruptcy for warning a corporation of that same risk.”

Charlie Cray, director of the Campaign for Corporate Reform, spoke about the need to stem the tide of corporations that are leaving America for offshore tax havens.

“As we’ve seen with the struggle to keep Stanley Works and other companies from dodging their taxes, offshore reincorporation is the latest tool in the corporate globalizers’ race to the bottom,” Cray said. “It’s time to take this hammer out of the hands of corporate globalizers before the rest of us get nailed.”

Citizen Works introduced a new study showing how almost half of the members of Congress have yet to introduce a single piece of post-Enron reform legislation.

Citizen Works also introduced an “Index of the Corporate Crime Wave” to give citizens some essential figures on the crisis in corporate America.

Citizen Works is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing citizen participation in power by giving people the tools and opportunities to build democracy.