Enron conviction overturned

cashmoney · #1 05-31-2005, 01:00 PM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8046535/

what are you opinions on it all?

Personally, I think he got off like a fat rat but it was expected. If it wasnt overturned you'd have criminal defense attorneys across the nation sweating their balls off.

madmax · #2 05-31-2005, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cashmoney
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8046535/

what are you opinions on it all?

Personally, I think he got off like a fat rat but it was expected. If it wasnt overturned you'd have criminal defense attorneys across the nation sweating their balls off.

The Enron execs should all go to jail along with Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernard Ebbers.

MysticCat · #3 05-31-2005, 04:11 PM

It was the Arthur Anderson convictions, not Enron or Enron executives per se, that were overturned. (AA was Enron's accounting firm.)

bekibug · #4 05-31-2005, 05:03 PM

http://www.stratify.com/infocenter/d...t_on_email.pdf

That's a legal discovery service article about different trials that have used internal emails/memos and how that influenced the verdicts. Personally, I think that this conviction being overturned (unless it leads to Ken Lay's conviction somehow) is a giant crock. I agree with the original verdict, and here's why:

The stratify.com article suggests that the jury found AA guilty because it's awfully suspicious that AA not follow their own document-destruction policy all the time, then suddenly start shredding documents connected to the SEC subpoena they know they're about to get. According to a textbook from my business ethics class, Enron was a muti-hundred-million dollar a year client for AA. Throw that on top of the shredding, and you've got a pretty convincing case against them. Definitely not legally airtight, because it still comes down to the "little-man" accountants versus the "big-man" execs in a he-said-they-said deal, but there are a lot more people that should have gone down for that.

I know that AA, being the accounting firm, was not responsible for the decisions of Enron executives. But the way that Enron hid its debt on the statements of its numerous SPEs basically could not have happened without a lot of help covering up on the part of AA. I think both firms should have been equally liable for the losses to Enron employees/investors/customers because of it. It does make me glad that AA lost their clients and accounting license. At least justice got served (somewhat) there.

In summary, as cashmoney said, he got off like a fat rat.

cashmoney · #5 05-31-2005, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by madmax
The Enron execs should all go to jail along with Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernard Ebbers.

And why do you think that?

carnation · #6 05-31-2005, 08:01 PM

My sister-in-law was Ken Lay's secretary for years. I couldn't figure it out because well, she's clueless. When all this blew up, my husband commented that we now knew why he hired my precious but DENSE sister-in-law!

LOL! I can just imagine what it was like when they were questioning her, probably a lot like "Who's On First".

DeltAlum · #7 06-01-2005, 09:53 AM

Vindicated or not, the tragedy of this is the number of lives and families so badly affected by the "death" of Arthur Anderson. The company is still gone.

MysticCat · #8 06-01-2005, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Vindicated or not, the tragedy of this is the number of lives and families so badly affected by the "death" of Arthur Anderson. The company is still gone.

Very true.

I don't know that I would say that Arthur Andersen has been "vindicated," though. As I understand it, the Supreme Court's decision was based on the determination that the trial judge's instructions to the jury were too broad and vague for the jury to properly determine whether obstruction of justice had taken place. The Supreme Court did not find that obstruction of justice hadn't taken place, but just that the jury wasn't properly told how to apply the law to the evidence.

madmax · #9 06-01-2005, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Vindicated or not, the tragedy of this is the number of lives and families so badly affected by the "death" of Arthur Anderson. The company is still gone.

Good. Arthur Anderson made their own bed. How about the stockholders of Enron that were screwed because of shotty accounting practices?

madmax · #10 06-01-2005, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MysticCat81
It was the Arthur Anderson convictions, not Enron or Enron executives per se, that were overturned. (AA was Enron's accounting firm.)

Really? Thanks for the info. I never would have figured that out without your help. Who is Martha Stewart?

MysticCat · #11 06-01-2005, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by madmax
Really? Thanks for the info. I never would have figured that out without your help. Who is Martha Stewart?

Seems obvious, I know, but since the title of this thread is "Enron conviction overturned" . . . .

And I thought you were Martha Stewart.

KSig RC · #12 06-01-2005, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bekibug

I know that AA, being the accounting firm, was not responsible for the decisions of Enron executives. But the way that Enron hid its debt on the statements of its numerous SPEs basically could not have happened without a lot of help covering up on the part of AA. I think both firms should have been equally liable for the losses to Enron employees/investors/customers because of it. It does make me glad that AA lost their clients and accounting license. At least justice got served (somewhat) there.

This is a misnomer, in that little in the way of convincing evidence was presented to show that AA violated GAAP in its actual accounting - however, much evidence was shown that Enron's in-house abused these principles to misrepresent to shareholders. The document shredding charges brought them down, in many ways, and unfortunately "it's fishy" is weak.

You may very well harbor ill will toward AA, but in looking at the history of similar cases, the firm received starkly different treatment than many other auditing and accounting firms (as have other recent cases) - that's generally not "justice being served", more like "public paranoia".

Tom Earp · #13 06-01-2005, 06:32 PM

Well, must be true, they are virtually out of Business, right?

I for one individual dont give a S*IT, these people Screwed each of us in some way!

This is not just one Company, but a Myrid.

Sorry, I dont give a good God Damn if all of the Asswholes are hung out to Dry. the workers are the ones who got screwed, not the Muckitys. The 1 % are the ones who screwed the 99 %.

Is there a Work Ethic anymore?

jb1617 · #14 06-01-2005, 07:11 PM

The real problem with the Arthur Anderson situation is that the entire firm was convicted for the actions of one office, and not even the entire office, just some high level jerks. Its kind of like if your brother robbed a bank and they sent you to jail too, and then after your life is ruined, the government, who sent you to jail, says "oops, we screwed up, sorry."

bekibug · #15 06-02-2005, 02:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by KSig RC
This is a misnomer, in that little in the way of convincing evidence was presented to show that AA violated GAAP in its actual accounting - however, much evidence was shown that Enron's in-house abused these principles to misrepresent to shareholders. The document shredding charges brought them down, in many ways, and unfortunately "it's fishy" is weak.

You may very well harbor ill will toward AA, but in looking at the history of similar cases, the firm received starkly different treatment than many other auditing and accounting firms (as have other recent cases) - that's generally not "justice being served", more like "public paranoia".

This is true, my bad. But what I was getting at is that if nothing else, AA serves as an example of what can and should happen if you go against GAAP, and ethics pretty much by default, when you help someone violate those principles.

AA was about 90 years old when it lost its license. That means it was around when the SEC was founded in 1933, then CAP, APB, and FASB in their respective years of founding/replacing the previous. You'd think that firms that had been around that long would have known what to expect if they helped someone deceive the general public through manipulating financial information.

Even if it was Enron's in-house accountants that were screwing with numbers, they should have been familiar with GAAP* and known the potential poostorm they were getting into violating them, and AA as a supposedly "neutral outside auditor" should have known that too.

It still appears, however, that AA knew that what Enron was doing was wrong and did nothing to stop it even though numerous potential investors/actual investors/employees with stock options were being decieved. This is one of those cases where failing to stop the wrong being done is just as bad as causing it.

*After all, generally accepted accounting principles is a concept you should be at least acquainted with as a business major (pretty much no matter the field), since virtually everyone in a business major has to take at least basic/intro accounting courses.