As I understand it Batman equips his war on crime by using Wayne Corporation’s weapons labs which obviously he does put on the books as a legitimate expense. There don’t seem to be other superheroes in the movies but in the comic books has Superman or Wonder Woman or anybody else ever criticized him for basically embezzling? Also the fact that he has such weapons resources at hand implies that he is doing a great deal of work in that field and his endless resources imply that he is selling the stuff by the bucketload so has anyone ever criticized Wayne Corporation for being so violent?
nm
Based on the movies, I gathered that this is a privately held (as opposed to public) company. If he owns the company, he can’t really embezzle from himself. It might make the tax preparation tricky, though.
+1 on the privately held company POV.
And if he uses the technology developed for his crimefighting escapades in some form of commercialized venture, then the company benefits as well.
You probably don’t want to think too much about the technology coming from Wayne industries. Because that makes you wonder why the 100’s of engineers responsible for those inventions don’t watch the news and think “Hey, that incredibly unique technology barreling through Gotham streets looks mighty familiar!”
Or how one ancient butler can maintain it all.
The movie Batman Begins gives a very quick nod to your embezzling question – Bruce Wayne is in the middle of some heist and the camera pans to the crate labeled property of Wayne industries, implying that he’s not really committing any crime because he’s stealing stuff that belongs to him already.
From what I recall, it was public but Wayne secretly bought up the majority under various fake companies, which I think is illegal? At least in the Bale version of the movies.
In fact, a junior accountant At Wayne Industries siezes on those accounting irregularities in The Dark Knight, ultimately figuring out that Wayne is Batman and threatening to expose him.
Seems like, at least in the Golden Age comics, he was guilty of child endangerment. Swinging from skyscrapers, running headlong into armed gangs- a person could get hurt that way.
From my memory of the Batman animated series from the 90s(the well regarded noirish one) was that while Bruce wasn’t stealing as it was a privately owned company, he was not strictly speaking legal either. What do I mean? Stuff like insurance fraud and false police reports, I’m sure falsifying corporate filings required by law and setting up front companies and money laundering etc.
So yes Batman/Wayne was breaking lots of laws and everyone who was in a position to do anything about seemed to think it was worthwhile in the balance for the good he did. I got the feeling that if the police and others REALLY wanted to they could very soon pierce the veil Wayne had created and figure it out, the thing was Gordon was on Wayne’s side.
Wouldn’t the same question apply to Tony Stark/Iron Man?
Isn’t the new comic book story that Wayne is public funding Batman? Or did that go away with the big DC reset?
Iron Man has always been an employee of Stark’s…and is now publicly known to be Stark.
I always liked that. Lucius Fox pretty much said “So, you think you have something on one of the richest men in the world, who you believe also stalks the night as a dangerous vigilante, and you want to try to blackmail him? Good luck with that, nice to have known you.”
That was a plot in the comic book series one time. Stark Industries is a publicly held company. SHIELD was always pressuring Tony Stark to give them access to his Iron Man technology but he refused. So SHIELD started buying up the company’s stock and eventually gained a controlling interest. Nick Fury called Tony Stark in and said “Ha, now we own all of your Iron Man technology and we can do whatever we want with it.” And Stark said “Nuh uh. Stark Industries doesn’t own Iron Man. I own all the patents on my suit personally.” And Fury said, “Grrrr. You win this time, Stark. I’ll sell you back your company.”
Okay, this may not have been a word-for-word transcript but you get the idea.
In the comics, Iron Man is a huge asset to the company. ‘We can build a super computer greater than any other, make it weigh a pound and fit in a cigarette case, and withstand temperature extremes and direct lightning strikes. Imagine what we can do for your laptop’
For decades, Iron Man has officially been on the Stark payroll as a bodyguard and security troubleshooter. Another corporation (I forget which) pays Hawkeye of the Avengers to be it’s security chief. In an issue of GLA, an opertive in the Grasshopper suit is working security for Roxxon Industries.
The main objection Stark stock holders have to Iron Man is that Stark refuses to sell the technology.
RE Batman
Warmonger? I’d say quite the opposite. Bruce never sold any of the Batman technology. Militaries all over the world would be interested in the stuff he uses.
He’s just a one man testing department fro the company’s R&D. They are his toys and he can play with them however he wants . . . 
Luckily Robin was an orphan owned by Wayne Enterprises.
Isn’t that an issue by itself? Why is Wayne Enterprises spending money to develop products that it never puts on the market?
Okay, if it’s a privately held company, that might not be illegal. But it’s got to be noticed in the business world that Bruce Wayne is building all these things for no apparent reason.
I’m failing to see how wasting money on private ventures would be illegal even if it were a publicly traded company. Wayne would have to answer to the stockholders, not the law.
In any case, public or private, I’m sure on their P&L there’s a line for R&D that’s never expanded on, and even if it were, the costs can be folded into “genuine” development. To steal from another movie: “You don’t actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”
He isn’t answering to his stockholders, who are the real owners of the company. He’s not telling them that he’s developing these products for his other job as a masked crime fighter.
So if you’re taking money that doesn’t belong to you and not telling the money’s owners what you’re doing with it, you’re breaking the law.
It’s legally no different than if the CEO of some corporation was using company money to pay for hookers and claiming it was being spent on office supplies.