|
Conspiracy Of Fools
''Conspiracy of Fools'' is a 2005 book by Kurt Eichenwald detailing the Enron scandal. Synopsis ''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. In the 1980s there were questionable activities at the company, but the bulk of the events depicted in the book occur from 1997 onward and led to Enron's collapse. In addition to Fastow, there are stories of the complicity of Enron's auditors (at Arthur Andersen), their lawyers (internal and external), the senior management (Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling), Fastow's partner in many of his deals, Michael Kopper, and Enron's board of directors. The picture that emerges of Enron is that of an out-of-control corporate culture that ignored the basic pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Eichenwald
Kurt Alexander Eichenwald (born June 28, 1961) is an American journalist and a ''New York Times'' bestselling author of five books, one of which, '' The Informant'' (2000), was made into a motion picture in 2009. He was a senior writer and investigative reporter with ''The New York Times'', Condé Nast's business magazine, '' Portfolio'', and later was a contributing editor with '' Vanity Fair'' and a senior writer with ''Newsweek''. Eichenwald had been employed by ''The New York Times'' since 1986 and primarily covered Wall Street and corporate topics such as insider trading, accounting scandals, and takeovers, but also wrote about a range of issues including terrorism, the Bill Clinton pardon controversy, federal health care policy, and sexual predators on the Internet. Early life and education Eichenwald was born in 1961. He graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas and Swarthmore College. His extracurricular activities during his time at Swarthmore included be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American Energy development, energy, Commodity, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was led by Kenneth Lay and developed in 1985 via a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies at the time of the merger. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper industry, pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting scandals, accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron became synonymous with willful, institutional fraud and systemic Corporate crime, corruptio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enron Scandal
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal sparked by American energy company Enron, Enron Corporation filing for bankruptcy after news of widespread internal fraud became public in October 2001, which led to the dissolution of its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, previously one of the Big Four auditors, five largest in the world. The Bankruptcy in the United States#Largest bankruptcies, largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure. Enron was formed in 1985 by Kenneth Lay after merging Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth. Several years later, when Jeffrey Skilling was hired, Lay developed a staff of executives that – by the use of accounting loopholes, the misuse of mark-to-market accounting, special purpose entity, special purpose entities, and poor financial reporting – were able to hide billions of dollars in debt from failed deals and projects. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and other executives misl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Fastow
Andrew Stuart Fastow (born December 22, 1961) is an American convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities (limited partnerships which Enron controlled) used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his and the company's conduct in 2001. Fastow was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence and ultimately served five years for convictions related to these acts. His wife, Lea Weingarten also worked at Enron, where she was an assistant treasurer; she pleaded guilty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporations
A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as "born out of statute"; a legal person in a legal context) and recognized as such in Corporate law, law for certain purposes. Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e., by an ''ad hoc'' act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through List of company registers, registration. Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the jurisdiction where they are chartered based on two aspects: whether they can issue share capital, stock, or whether they are formed to make a profit (accounting), profit. Depending on the number of owners, a corporation can be classified as ''aggregate'' (the subject of this articl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Partnerships
A partnership is an agreement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments or combinations. Organizations may partner to increase the likelihood of each achieving their mission and to amplify their reach. A partnership may result in issuing and holding equity or may be only governed by a contract. History Partnerships have a long history; they were already in use in medieval times in Europe and in the Middle East. According to a 2006 article, the first partnership was implemented in 1383 by Francesco di Marco Datini, a merchant of Prato and Florence. The Covoni company (1336–40) and the Del Buono-Bencivenni company (1336–40) have also been referred to as early partnerships, but they were not formal partnerships. In Europe, the partnerships contributed to the Commercial Revolution which started in the 13th century. In the 15th century the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen LLP was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporations and was one of the "Big Five" accounting firms (along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers). The firm collapsed by mid-2002, as details of its questionable accounting practices for energy company Enron and telecommunications company WorldCom were revealed amid the two high-profile bankruptcies. The scandals were a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. History Founding Born on May 30, 1885, in Plano, Illinois, and orphaned at the age of 16, Arthur E. Andersen began working as a mail boy by day and attended school at night, eventually being hired as the assistant to the comptroller of Allis-Chalmers in Chicago. In 1908, after attending courses at night while working f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Lay
Kenneth Lee Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman and political donor who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron. He was heavily involved in Enron scandal, Enron's accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the largest bankruptcy ever to that date. Lay was indicted by a grand jury and was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud at trial of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, trial. Lay died in July 2006 while vacationing in his house near Aspen, Colorado, three months before his scheduled sentencing. A preliminary autopsy reported Lay died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. His death resulted in a vacated judgment. Conspiracy theory, Conspiracy theories regarding Lay's death surfaced, alleging that it was faked. Lay left behind "a legacy of shame" characterized by "mismanagement and dishonesty". In 2009 a list posted on Portfolio.com ranked Lay as the third-worst American CEO of all time. His actions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeffrey Skilling
Jeffrey Keith Skilling (born November 25, 1953) is an American businessman who in 2006 was convicted of federal felony charges relating to the Enron scandal. Skilling, who was CEO of Enron during the company's collapse, was eventually sentenced to 24 years in prison, of which he served 12 after multiple appeals. Skilling was indicted on 35 counts of crimes related to the Enron scandal. In 2006 he was found guilty of conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements, and securities fraud. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined $45 million. The US Supreme Court heard arguments in the appeal of the case in 2010,"High Court Hears ex-Enron CEO Skilling's Appeal" by Mark Sherman, |
Ponzi Scheme
A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of scheme misleads investors by either falsely suggesting that profits are derived from legitimate business activities (whereas the business activities are non-existent), or by exaggerating the extent and profitability of the legitimate business activities, leveraging new investments to fabricate or supplement these profits. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as investors continue to contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment or lose faith in the non-existent assets they are purported to own. Some of the first recorded incidents to meet the modern definition of the Ponzi scheme were carried out from 1869 to 1872 by Adele Spitzeder in German Empire, Germany and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accounting Scandals
Accounting scandals are business scandals that arise from intentional manipulation of financial statements with the disclosure of financial misdeeds by trusted executives of corporations or governments. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets, or underreporting the existence of liabilities; these can be detected either manually, or by means of deep learning. It involves an employee, account, or corporation itself and is misleading to investors and shareholders. This type of "creative accounting" can amount to fraud, and investigations are typically launched by government oversight agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. Employees who commit accounting fraud at the request of their employers are subject to personal criminal prosecution. Two types of fraud Misappropriation of assets Misappropriat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
