Later in the year, this same task force, including Cheney, recommended Enron as a company that was upstanding and endorses its many proposals. This further complicated the Enron image giving it further clout to conduct business in an unethical manner. By the end of this year, many of Enron's top executives, including Skilling, begin selling off their shares of company stock. This occurs before it is revealed to shareholders that Enron had a $618 million dollar loss in the fiscal year. This behavior, to a senior security specialist, represents severely unethical and corrupt decision making and helps to show prior knowledge of the Enron scandal involving Fastow's shell companies and the manipulation of the energy markets in their favor.
Within the company itself, it would have been rather clear to the security professional working there that the senior management knew things were amiss. A security professional could have been tipped…...

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References

NewsMax Wires. (2002). "Enron: A Pattern of Abuses?" Retrieved March 4, 2011, from http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/21/60605.shtml.

Open Secrets.org. (2002). Enron and Andersen. Washington, DC: The Center for Responsive

Politics. Retrieved October 27, 2005, from http://www.opensecrets.org/news/enron

Ortmeier, P.J. (2005). Security management: An introduction (2nd

Ethically, the actions of Enron management were reprehensible. From a deontological perspective, they broke laws. From a consequentialist perspective, their actions resulted in significant financial losses for millions of people, job losses for thousands and a loss of public faith in the financial system.
The Enron scandal is perhaps the most egregious misuse of data in recent years. Data was manipulated and/or hidden from those whose job was to analyze the data. ide-ranging and catastrophic losses resulted from this misuse. Had the data been presented factually and honestly, the analysis that flowed from it would have benefited Enron's internal and external stakeholders. The company may have suffered in the short-term but would have been able to survive in the long-term.

orks Cited:

Thomas, Cathy Booth. (2002). Called to Account. Time Magazine. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,263006,00.html

Houston Chronicle: The Fall of Enron. (2001-2009). Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from http://www.chron.com/news/specials/enron/

ee, Heesun.…...

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Works Cited:

Thomas, Cathy Booth. (2002). Called to Account. Time Magazine. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from  http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,263006,00.html 

Houston Chronicle: The Fall of Enron. (2001-2009). Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from  http://www.chron.com/news/specials/enron/ 

Wee, Heesun. (2001). Enron in Perfect Hindsight. Business Week. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from  http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2001/nf20011219_8118.htm

Enron could engage in their derivative trading strategy with no fear of government intervention because derivative trading was specifically exempted from government regulation. Due in part to a ruling by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) chairwoman, Wendy Graham, derivatives remained free of regulatory oversight. Ms. Graham, wife of Texas senator Phil Graham, made this ruling 5 weeks before resigning as chairwoman of the CFTC and joining the Enron oard of Directors in 1993.

Derivative accounting is further complicated because there is no consistent way to fairly report their value and risk in a company's financial report. In 1998 Rule No. 133, "Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities" was developed by the Financial Accounting Standards oard (FAS), an independent agency that sets guidelines for corporate auditors. Rule 133 contains more than 800 pages, which further complicates its adoption and consistent interpretation by various companies. SFAS No. 133 was subsequently amended…...

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Bibliography

Dettmer, Jamie, and John Berlau. "Requiem for Enron: There's Enough Blame to Go around for the Collapse of the Energy Giant From Executives to Auditors to Financial Analysts to Congress." Insight on the News 7 Jan. 2002: 12+. Questia. 10 Mar. 2005 .

Folbre, Nancy. "Blowing the Whistle on Poverty Policy." Review of Social Economy 61.4 (2003): 479+. Questia. 10 Mar. 2005 .

Gup, Benton E., ed. Too Big to Fail: Policies and Practices in Government Bailouts / . Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.

Hartgraves, Ai L., and George J. Benston. "The Evolving Accounting Standards for Special Purpose Entities and Consolidations." Accounting Horizons 16.3 (2002): 245+..

cis.upenn.edu/.../nwlife06.html)
One can not begin to trace the various lines and connections of the myriad of relationships, but the chart does fulfill the purpose of showing how much of a web this situation involved.

In the wake of the Enron scandal many questions have arisen centering on the strength of the U.S. Economy. Investors have questioned the accounting practices of many other firms; there has been significant fallout on the financial market; and considerable negative consequences in the market, the economy, the investment paradigm, and public confidence. All this contributed to a decline in the strength of the American economy, and certainly also had global repercussions.

The increased skepticism about accounting practices has forced many multi-national corporations all over the world to defend their financial statements. This loss of investor confidence has lead to significant changes in accounting standards and auditing practices. Corporate executives are now being required to be accountable to both…...

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REFERENCES

Bryce, Robert, (2002), Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron,

Public Affair Press.

Conroy, S. And T. Emerson. (2006). "Changing Ethical Attitudes: The Case of the Enron and ImClone Scandals." Social Science Quarterly.

87(2): 395-410.

Introduction
Enron was one of the biggest business collapses, and one of the most egregious incidents during a period in the early 2000s when investor faith in the securities system was shaken by a series of scandals. The scandals varied in terms of their composition, but behind each of them was greed, the drive by senior management teams to defraud securities regulators and investors for their own gain. This paper will look at the Enron fraud in particular. This was probably the worst, for the bald-faced contempt that Enron management showed to securities regulators, and the biggest, as Enron was one of the stars of the stock market during its ride up, and crashed to worthlessness almost instantly.

Key Players

As with most cases of stock market fraud, the key players were the senior executives. At Enron, the key players were Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow and the accounting firm Arthur Andersen.…...

Enron
In his book A Conspiracy of Fools, Kurt Eichenwald details the Enron implosion, how it came about and how the main players were. For several years there had been suspicions about Enron's behavior -- most notably the company's inability to produce financial statements. The term scandal is broadly used to describe what happened to Enron, but as Eichenwald notes Enron was more a broad conspiracy to commit fraud. The company was allowed to get away with it for so long because it had become a Wall Street and political darling, an example of the effectiveness and power of market capitalism.

Enron was a company that engaged, theoretically, in energy trading. The company's business model has been described as "only vaguely understood even by its own competitors" and this is part of what had led to the belated nature of its downfall. Enron was always a house of cards, but as Eichenwald…...

Enron Virtue Ethics
The author of this report is to pick three virtues from a list and describe how they were or were not applied in a certain instances. The virtues that can be picked from are justice, fairness, integrity, courage, honor and truthfulness. For the three virtues that are chosen, there will be a definition of each one. After defining each virtue, there will be an application to the Enron case. Indeed, there was not a lot of virtue when it came to the Enron case. It started at the top with Lay, Skilling and Fastow and there were a lot of other people that were actively involved in the fraud and depravity that was under way. At the same time, the ethical malfeasance on the part of those three men and the others led to a lot of people being victimized before and after it all blew up in…...

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References

BARRIONUEVO, A. (2006). Fastow Leaves Stand Insisting Lay and Skilling Knew - New York Times. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 26 October 2015, from  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/business/businessspecial3/14enron.html 

Business Insider. (2011). 10 YEARS LATER: What Happened To The Former Employees Of Enron? Business Insider. Retrieved 26 October 2015, from  http://www.businessinsider.com/10-years-later-what-happened-to-the-former-employees-of-enron-2011-12 

CNN. (2015). Enron Fast Facts - CNN.com. CNN. Retrieved 26 October 2015, from  http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/02/us/enron-fast-facts/ 

Erb, M. (2011). Four Ways to Foster Fairness in the Workplace. Entrepreneur. Retrieved 26 October 2015, from  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219505

Enron Ethics
The Enron/Arthur Andersen affair was perhaps the worst business and accounting scandal in the history of the United States. Indeed, Enron was engaging in a massive amount of malfeasance at all levels of the organization while Arthur Andersen, who was supposed to be an ethical and impartial third party, was at least partially in on the fraud. The circumstances were major as the power brokers for both firms paid dearly and many of the top Enron executives were convicted of crimes for their part in the fraud. Kenneth Lay only escaped sentencing because he died before the sentence could be announced. This report shall focus on some of the legal cases that happened in the aftermath of Enron including the obstruction of justice charges against Arthur Andersen and an appeal by Jeffrey Skilling, one of the convicted Enron executives. While the overall guilt of the parties involved were not…...

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References

Abelson, Floyd. 'ENRON's COLLAPSE: THE AUDITOR; Audit Papers Usually Held For Years, Accountants Say'. Nytimes.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Carney, John. 'Why Jeff Skilling's Jail Sentence Got Downsized'. CNBC. N.p., 2013. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Grissom, Brandi. 'Errors In Judgment: The Consequences Of Prosecutorial Mistakes -- The Texas Tribune'. The Texas Tribune. N.p., 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Mears, Bill. 'CNN.Com - Arthur Andersen Conviction Overturned - May 31, 2005'. Cnn.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

SOC 205 – Society Law and Government 1 The Enron (Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling) Trial
Summary of the Trial
The Enron Trial dates as one of high profile case of corporate fraud in the US. Enron was founded in 1985 by Kenneth Lee Lay and was reported as the largest seller of Natural gas in North America by 2000. The American energy company recorded a spectacular rise with revenues increasing to over $100 billion in 2000 from $9 billion in 1995 and an increase of Enron’s stock prices recording a high of US$90.75 per share. Enron Corporation was ranked consistently as America's Most Innovative Company" between 1996 and 2001 by Fortune Magazine. The end of 2001 saw an unprecedented collapse of Enron’s stock price from US$90.75 per share to less than a dollar following an announced of $1billon loss in the first quarter of 2001 and resulting to declaration of bankruptcy by…...

Rise and Fall of Enron
The meteoric rise and fall of Enron is one of the most notorious tales in the history of corporate America. Enron was the seventh-largest company in the United States in 2000 and 'Fortune' magazine had declared it as America's "most innovative company" for six straight years; its share price had climbed from $10 a share in 1991 to over $90 a share in August 2000 while its revenue jumped to more than $100 billion. ("Rise and Fall of an Energy Giant") No one could have predicted that before the end of the following year the "rising star" of corporate America would be filing for bankruptcy, shaking investor confidence to the core and signalling the end of the longest bull-run in the American stock exchange's history. The ramifications of the dramatic collapse still reverberate in global financial and energy markets as well the U.S. courts, where a…...

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Works Cited

Fowler, Tom. "Enron's implosion was anything but sudden." Houston Chronicle. June 30, 2004.  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/enron/2655409 

Lindstrom, Diane. "Enron Scandal." Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2005. June 13, 2005. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_701610398/Enron_Scandal.html

'Rise and fall of an energy giant." BBC News. November 28, 2001. June 30, 2004.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1681758.stm 

Thomas, C. William. "The Rise and fall of Enron: when a company looks too good to be true, it usually is." Journal of Accountancy. (March / April 2002). June 13, 2005.  http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/apr2002/thomas.htm

Enron Debacle
hen the mighty giant, Enron, fell, it fell hard and resulted in the largest bankruptcy in American history. orldwide focus then fell upon all who might have a possible answer for this event. Intense focus fell first upon Enron executives, and then, as the event evolved into what appears to be one of the most massive cases of corporate corruption ever known, others were brought into the spotlight.

According to a statement published on the Andersen website, the primary corporate auditors of Enron, the organization was founded in 1913, when "Arthur Andersen recruited the brightest students into his classes. Then, he turned them into 'thoroughly trained accountants' who were able to go beyond the obvious in their work by using unique methodologies to improve financial performance." It is, perhaps, those "unique methodologies" that took an unexpected turn at some point in the company's long and previously respected history, and…...

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Works Cited

Andersen. "An 88-Year History of Looking Ahead." 2002. 2/5/02

 http://www.andersen.com/website.nsf/content/AboutUsOurStart?OpenDocument 

Associated Press. "Former Enron Exec. Found Dead." Hays, Kristen. Jan. 25, 2002.

A.P. story picked up in Washington Post. 2/5/02.

That kind of behavior would be unacceptable today. Huge financial rewards accrued to him for being astute. Indirectly his success in the West focused more attention on the West and encouraged exploration and development by others. Astor retired from business as the richest person in the world, so he was very successful at monopolizing the fur trade. As many other wealthy people would follow his example, Astor became somewhat of a philanthropist in his later years. At least he showed some inclination toward social responsibility. Ironically the laws enacted to outlaw trusts have come to the forefront again with the battle between the Justice Department and Microsoft Corporation. In the same ironic way, ill Gates has emulated Astor through socially responsible acts such as supplying childhood illness vaccines to African countries.
It is interesting how the company operating in the more heavily regulated times is the company that exceeds all…...

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Bibliography

Altman, Daniel. "Enron Had More Than One Way to Disguise Rapid Rise in Debt." New York Times 17 Feb. 2002.  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/business/17BANK.html .

Barrett, Ted. "Enron CEO warned about 'wave of accounting scandals'." CNN.com. 14 Jan. 2002.  http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/01/14/enron.letter/ 

Norris, Floyd, David Barboza. "Lay Sold Shares for $100 Million." New York Times 16 Feb. 2002.  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/business/16LAY.html .

Schwartz, John. "Explanations From One Former Enron Official, Silence From Another." New York Times 17 Feb. 2002.  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/business/17UPDA.html .

party transactions reported on by Arthur Andersen & Co.
Related party transactions are essential transactions between closely related parties or individuals. Although not blatantly wrong in isolation, they can be particularly harmful if the practice is abused. The error with Enron's disclosure is that it was not clear enough. Investors, analysts and creditors could not properly ascertain the extent of the related party transactions at Enron. This was particularly true as the company did not want anyone to know about it. As a result the company was able to hid billions of dollars of off balance sheet debt from investors. This resulted in large, unknown exposures to investors. Arthur Anderson looked the other way in regards to informing investors about these exposures. They classified many of the entities that held the excessive amount of debt as special purpose entities. With the help of Arthur Anderson, Enron avoided consolidated the results…...

Enron and isk Management
Enron is one company that did not practice good risk management following its reinvention of itself as a financial/energy trading giant. This paper will describe what happened to Enron and show how its problems could have been avoided using sound risk management regarding transparency and accountability.

Before Ken Lay gave Enron over to the new, "innovative" leaders Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow, it had been a basic energy provider -- transparent and accountable. It had nothing to hide because it was doing nothing wrong and therefore it did not need opaque accounting practices. All that changed when Skilling came aboard and opened Lay's eyes to the "possibilities" afforded by mark-to-market accounting.

Enron's management team, led by Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, was a dynamic, powerful force, with a strategy that few understood but which, according to the books, appeared to be making everyone money hand over fist.…...

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References

Eichenwald, K. (2005). Conspiracy of Fools. NY: Broadway Books.

Elkind, P., McLean, B. (2013). Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room. NY: Penguin.

business scandals in the early 2000s brought the issue of business ethics to the fore -- Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. The three share some similarities but they are different in other ways. Enron was simply a case of criminal activity. The company's management did not publish financial statements and when they did the statements completely misrepresented the company's financial position. This occurred on the direction of the senior management team, with the complicity of the auditor, Arthur Andersen. These managers were heavily invested in Enron and therefore had a strong personal interest in creating phony financial statements in order to pump up the company's stock price. The corruption at Enron ran deep within the company, such that the scandal all but wiped the company out.
The situation at WorldCom was that CEO Bernie Ebbers was a heavy owner of the company's shares. As such, he benefitted from implementing an aggressive…...

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References

PBS. (2013). Accounting fraud is business as usual at the Pentagon. PBS News Hour. Retrieved December 4, 2013 from  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/11/accounting-fraud-is-business-as-usual-at-the-pentagon.html

One possible essay subject related to case studies for SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and ACC (Accounting) could be the recent scandal involving the German fintech company Wirecard. Wirecard was once touted as one of Germany's biggest success stories, but it collapsed in 2020 after it emerged that the company had been involved in a massive accounting fraud.

The scandal raised serious questions about the effectiveness of regulatory oversight by the SEC, as well as the role of auditing firms in detecting and preventing financial fraud. It also highlighted the challenges of regulating the rapidly-evolving fintech industry, which often operates in....