In the summer of 2001, Vice President of Corporate Development, Sherron Watkins, alerts the executives to some accounting irregularities. She directed the higher-ups to the fact that the books and records for Enron were inflated. Company officials ignore Sherron’s warning. In the trials, Watkins duly noted that she “… fully expected Mr. Lay to conduct a thorough into my concerns.” Sherron became one of the important witnesses for the government but not the only one.
In August of 2001, the company reached its 100 billion dollars in revenue. At the same time the CEO, Jeff Skilling, unexpectedly resigned and cashed in nearly 60 million dollars’ worth in Enron shares. The resign resulted in Wall Street questioning if Enron was actually steadily improving and becoming more successful.
Common knowledge is that Skilling used Andy Fastow, the CFO, to create the Special Purpose Entities in order to offload the bad debts and bad assets to make the appearance that Enron was sounder than they actually were. …show more content…
The government’s stance is that Enron committed this premeditated fraud that swindled not only the investors of Enron but the employees as well as the public. I think the nail in the coffin for both Skilling and Lay was a recorded call from 2001 between Skilling and an inquisitive Wall Street analyst. The analyst told Skilling that they are the only financial institution that cannot produce a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings. After the analyst had posed the question, Skilling laughed and spit out multiple random “You” and finally said thank you very much we appreciated this and called the analyst a name before hanging up while continuing to laugh. The light that was shed with this crucial information was that Skilling was most certainly annoyed that the analyst questioned Enron’s books and records while the company was on the up-and-up and didn’t want the analyst to look further into
In August of 2001, the company reached its 100 billion dollars in revenue. At the same time the CEO, Jeff Skilling, unexpectedly resigned and cashed in nearly 60 million dollars’ worth in Enron shares. The resign resulted in Wall Street questioning if Enron was actually steadily improving and becoming more successful.
Common knowledge is that Skilling used Andy Fastow, the CFO, to create the Special Purpose Entities in order to offload the bad debts and bad assets to make the appearance that Enron was sounder than they actually were. …show more content…
The government’s stance is that Enron committed this premeditated fraud that swindled not only the investors of Enron but the employees as well as the public. I think the nail in the coffin for both Skilling and Lay was a recorded call from 2001 between Skilling and an inquisitive Wall Street analyst. The analyst told Skilling that they are the only financial institution that cannot produce a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings. After the analyst had posed the question, Skilling laughed and spit out multiple random “You” and finally said thank you very much we appreciated this and called the analyst a name before hanging up while continuing to laugh. The light that was shed with this crucial information was that Skilling was most certainly annoyed that the analyst questioned Enron’s books and records while the company was on the up-and-up and didn’t want the analyst to look further into