Mining companies harm systematically and severely the environment and make vulnerable and
dependent local communities. Mining companies are not all the same though; they very much
vary in size and power. Such variance makes it more difficult to analyze – and properly measure
– the use of criminal law in the case of corporate harmful wrongdoing. Big mining companies
have been intensively exploiting fragile regulatory ambiences or, even worse, promoting
regulatory capture and dependence of corporate financing. They reproduce a deleterious market
architecture, where compliance expenditures simply obstruct domestic companies from playing a
more relevant role in the society. There are many small and medium companies that could be
much more sustainable, promoting a fair and legitimate exploitation of natural resources. This
essay addresses the need for a critical evaluation of overcompliance strategies (Rorie et al., 2018)
and how it can be used by big mining companies as an illegitimate instrument. Apart from that,
the essay aims to analyze whether overcompliance can facilitate company's authorization to
continue its activities, perverting the idea of social licenses. The essay will explore how
companies that enjoy a comparative advantage use overcompliance to dominate smaller
companies’ market, and whether this practice can result in harmful wrongdoing due to nonadaptation
to the imposed more stringent environmental regulation. Instead of applying
corporate resources and the criminal justice system to detect and react against corporate harmful
wrongdoing, it replicates selectiveness and damage to smaller players. The essay makes use of
secondary data and literature review of extractives industry, compliance research and corporate
criminology.