Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An Enron manual of ethics from July 2000, about a year before the company collapsed. Enron's complex financial statements were confusing to shareholders and analysts. [1]: 6 [10] When speculative business ventures proved disastrous, it used unethical practices to use accounting limitations to misrepresent earnings and modify the balance sheet to indicate favorable performance.
In the long history of financial frauds, Enron ranks near the top of the list, with the once high-flying energy trading company suddenly unraveling in a web of lies and accounting sleight-of-hand.
Conspiracy of Fools tells the story of the 2001 collapse of Enron.Enron's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Andrew Fastow is depicted as voraciously greedy, using front corporations and partnerships, paying himself "management" and "consultant" fees as if he were an outsider, all while cooking Enron's books to show fictitious profits.
Then Enron would sell the "excess" power to the state at a premium. "Ricochet": Also called "megawatt-laundering" (by analogy to money laundering ), Ricochet was the power equivalent of a land flip : buy in-state power cheaply, flip it out-of-state to an intermediary, then re-sell it to California at a highly inflated "imported" price.
George W. Bush, sitting U.S. president at the time of Enron's collapse, received $312,500 to his campaigns and $413,800 to his presidential war chest and inaugural fund. [116] Dick Cheney, sitting U.S. vice president at the time of Enron's collapse, met with Enron executives six times to develop a new energy policy. He refused to show minutes ...
It’s the comeback story no one asked for — the resurrection of a brand so toxic it remains synonymous with corporate fraud more than two decades after it collapsed in bankruptcy. That’s ...
[2] Lay insisted that Enron's collapse was due to a conspiracy waged by short sellers, rogue executives, and the news media. [27] [2] On May 25, 2006, Lay was found guilty on six counts of conspiracy and fraud by the jury. In a separate bench trial, Judge Lake ruled that Lay was guilty of four additional counts of fraud and making false statements.
On August 15, 2001, Sherron Watkins, Vice President of Corporate Development at Enron, wrote an anonymous letter to Kenneth Lay sharing her concerns about the company's accounting practices, and cited Baxter's prior complaints to Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and other Enron executives regarding what he considered Enron's unethical and possible illegal transactions.