How this works seems, at first approximation, pretty simple to me. The monetary loss (possibly quite large here) is the financial incentive to punish a crime. A

How this works seems, at first approximation, pretty simple to me. The monetary loss (possibly quite large here) is the financial incentive to punish a crime. And the amount of money the affected person or corporation still has, after that, is the power they have to pursue punishment. Therefore, by the market incentives our society knows, loves, and endlessly promotes, extremely rich profiteers tend to get first and best justice, regardless of the social value of pursuing it. Here, I think it's negative social value to punish these people, although reasonable people can probably disagree on that. An interesting corollary is that if a crime causes money to be transferred from someone with less power to someone with more power (power being generally approximated by wealth), then there will be an overall negative incentive to pursue justice, at least as far as those two parties are concerned. This certainly doesn't explain all criminal justice, there is some basic functioning of society to be upheld etc. But it arguably explains a lot of which injustices do and don't get punished that you can see daily just by reading the news.