In 2002, Congress signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in response to several notorious corporate scandals, including those at Enron/Worldcom. The piece of legislation was aimed to hold corporate officers personally liable and to rebuild public confidence in the corporate sector. SOX, “requires violations of securities laws or breaches of fiduciary responsibility to be reported to either the chief legal officer or CEO of the company by-house attorneys or outside counsel (Reed, & Bogardus, 2015).” While most provisions of SOX are only applicable to public businesses, at least two criminal provisions apply to nonprofit businesses: whistleblower protection and forbidding the destruction, alteration, or concealment of documents or the impediment of investigations. Section 806 created a new federal anti-retaliation protection for corporate whistleblowers.…
The management of Enron Company raised the company’s price share over a short period through misappropriation of accounts, which misrepresented the company’s profits to investment relations campaigns. Through such malpractices, the management managed to sell 1.75 million shares of worth more than $1 billion at a price ranging from $80-$40 down. There was contradiction, lack of transparency in Enron has published financial statements, and its financial status as it was at that moment. The misappropriation of funds and accounts was a deliberate and intentional strategy of Enron’s Corporation top management, which was a direct show of fraudulent activities and dishonesty undertaken in the company…
The reasons of the fraud are results from privileges that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are granted from the U.S. Congress. They are government-sponsored enterprises which are chartered by the Congress, enjoy special privileges from the Federal Government such as exemption from federal and state income state, credit support from the U.S. Treasury; moreover, they are not subject to standard financial disclosures. Lack of effective and sufficient internal control is also another reason for this accounting fraud in 2003. The accounting scandal of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is strongly related to two of the three main points of the fraud triangle, which are opportunity and rationalization.…
Ethics, broadly defined, is the a set of values or principles established by society for its betterment. Many of these values and principles are incorporated into culture and law. Organizations today integrate ethics into the foundation of their businesses in order to augment the professional value and trustworthiness of the their enterprise. Both public and private companies are expected to uphold certain ideals and internal controls for the benefit of their stakeholders. Operating with high virtues dictates an enterprise’s true value.…
The Most Infamous Cases of the FBI The Federal Bureau of investigation was formed in 1908 by Attorney General Charles Bonaparte during president Roosevelt’s presidency. The duties and responsibilities of the FBI were originally ill-defined. The FBI started out with fewer than 60 agents. When the FBI was first established, there were few federal crimes (Schlesinger 19 and 20). Now, the FBI has many very important cases, including cases involving terrorism, Espionage, public corruption, civil rights, organized crime, and white collar crimes.…
MAYBE A BALLER INTRODUCTION HERE IDK CHECK LATER On July 30, 2002, the United States government enacted a law that set expanded or even completely new requirements for all United States public company management, boards and public accounting firms. This was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” in the Senate, and the “Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act” in the House of Representatives. (REFERENCE). In addition to setting new requirements for public companies, there are also numerous provisions of the Act that apply to private companies as well. Included in these provisions is the willful destruction of evidence to impede a Federal investigation.…
In 1970, 32 years after the creation of Fannie Mae, the U.S. government chartered Freddie Mac. However, the company became shareholder-owned, while keeping its government perks. The company doesn’t pay income taxes, have credit lines with U.S. Treasury, and can borrow at a low price because lenders assume the government will help them if they get in trouble. Investors knew Freddie Mac as “Steady Freddy” due to its predictable earnings. During their statistics-filled speeches, bankers used to walk out confident there weren’t going to be any surprises.…
During the housing market crash of 2008, many people lost their homes due to defaults on their mortgages. This incident derived from the greediness of bankers—wanting to profit as much as possible by overlooking key lending requirements—but when the crash happened, poor people and immigrants became the scapegoats. This added to the already bad reputation of these two groups in the United States. It was during this time that Ryan Zhang immigrated to America. Arriving at a tumultuous time, Ryan struggled to survive until he joined the church.…
IRS Scandal, Government Targeting Conservatives and its Evil Implications There has been a bounty of scandals and controversies associated with the current administration during these past 6 years. • Operation Fast and Furious • Benghazi • Bowe Bergdahl and the Five Taliban Trade • Obamacare • Secret Service Sex Scandal • Downplay of ISIS • Associated Press Scandal • NSA Scandal These are but a few of the questionable acts from a very long list. One scandal in particular, is enough to raise a few hairs on your neck. That is the Internal Revenue Service scandal.…
Numerous laws were broken in the Enron scandal. The mail and wire fraud statutes of U.S. law criminalize the use of wires the enable a scheme to defraud or to obtain money by fraudulent means (Seitzinger, Morris, & Jickling, 2002). The honest-service statue, the law Skilling alleged broke that was then overturned, defines the fraud as a scheme to deprive another of the intangible right to honest service. Enron was subject to quite a few other laws that were broken. The company was supposed to disclose all information concerning federal securities to any public investor so that the public can make investment decisions.…
When activists, citizens, and others made pleas for prosecuting the companies who were manipulating information and committing investor fraud, Congress enacted a corporate reform law (130). This law placed heavy requirements on companies while ignoring those who failed in regulating the previous companies. While the corporate reforms did improve the companies superficially, the only way to actually improve a company is moral reform. There are three principles that summarize corporate reform. Transparency is the first: that the company will “conduct business and make decisions with integrity, honesty, and input from investors.”…
Fund embezzlement, employee assault, intended false advertising, fraud, are just a few in many unethical practices in the market place since a long time ago. This raises a question: Does business ethics really exists? Of course, does exist given that each one of every company is given an ethical conduct of some sort, and all required to submit Social Responsibilities Report at the end of every year. However, business ethics is different, because it is more twisted in the market place. It is usually not taken very seriously and even sometimes changed to fit certain situations, such as it is not “right” for the employee to go around and talk about how his or her CEOs or coworkers are cheating with accounts.…
Ian D Johnson Jb Henriksen Accounting 2600 11/1/17 Case Presentation: Enron Scandal Before the scandal that Enron is widely known for today, they were an up and coming American energy company led by CEO Kenneth Lay. In 1985, Lay helped to merge two natural gas companies known as Houston Natural gas and InterNorth to form Enron. Soon after, Congress approved legislation that deregulated the sale of natural gas, allowing companies to use the free market to sell energy. The company became a national middle man for the electricity for the newly deregulated states. This allowed Enron to sell energy at higher prices, increasing its revenue.…
Enron Case Introduction After watching the video “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, (Youtube), several issues came into light. It is known that Enron has been the seventh largest company to declare the bankruptcy in the year 2001. The reasons of their bankruptcy were becoming clear as many investors lost millions of dollars, due to which the lawmakers sought to enact some legislation so that these activities could be prevented. Obviously the smartest people from Enron had entered various questionable transaction with the customers and different entities.…
In the light of the growing number of scams, accounting scandals, massaging of books, misuse and misappropriation of public money, the importance of Corporate Governance can’t be overstressed. Formation and proper functioning of Corporate Governance body abiding by international rules and regulations has become of quintessential importance today as survival and success in global market can be ensured only via foreign investment, foreign customers: simply in a word by going global. Image 1: Reference Bullet no. 17 Corporate Governance is the way a corporation polices itself. It intends to increase the accountability, transparency and efficiency of the management and advocates adoption of consumer and environment friendly business practices.…