During the last five years, fully 82 percent of individuals referred for criminal prosecution in the federal system were actually prosecuted.

But during the same five years, only 12 percent of corporations referred for criminal prosecution were actually prosecuted.

That’s the conclusion of a report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University.

During the last five years, federal investigative agencies made 10,670 corporate criminal referrals to U.S. Attorneys throughout the country.

The number of referrals that went on to be prosecuted, however, was much smaller — 1,309 cases or, on average, only 262 a year. This means that for corporate referrals, only a small proportion (12.3%) of the matters recommended by the investigative agencies from FY 2010 to FY 2014 resulted in the filing of criminal charges in court.

The report found that corporate referrals were prosecuted at a much lower rate than those aimed at individuals.

For the nearly one million referrals aimed at individuals, 82.1 percent resulted in criminal charges being filed in federal court.

“This meant that for incoming referrals, prosecution of individual defendants was, on average, nearly seven times more likely than it was for corporations,” the report found.