Enron: Case Review: Smartest Guys In The Room

Enron Overview. For those who do not know what fraud is, it’s basically deception by showing people what they want to see. In business it’s the same concept, but in a larger scale by means of manipulating figures that will be shown to shareholders and investors. Before Sarbanes Oxley Act there was “Enron Corporation”, a fortune 500 company that managed to falsify their statements claiming revenues over 101 billion in a span of 15 years. In order for us to understand how this corporation managed to deceive the public for so long, the documentary or movie “Smartest Guys in the Room” goes into depth by providing viewers with first-hand information from people that worked close with or for “Enron”. In this movie we witness that behind every successful

As a prosecutor I believe he who runs the finance and accounting department of a corporation is as powerful as the CEO appointed reason being they have the knowledge to understand where the company is headed for example, “Enron’s” Andrew Fastow had the chance to report “Enron’s” illegal practices as he handled the biggest accounts of the corporation, but instead participated in the charade by benefiting his own bank account and “arguably” that of the co-owners. The charges brought forward in 2000 will be the same charges I would present as a prosecutor, conspiracy, fraud and over 90 counts of money laundering, but slightly change the punishment as I believe a plea deal of 10 years in prison does not account for the amount of money he embezzled for his benefit and the other executives. This was a major setback for the middle and lower class that traded and invested in “Enron”, which is why a 15 to 20 years in prison with no possibility of

One may ask, how is that different from the “Enron” scandal? There isn’t much to separate these two, it could be said that they are cousins. They both managed to cover their debts by overstating their revenue and profits and using other companies they owned to make profit or at least attempted to, but ultimately drowning in debt and committing fraud. What makes these two companies different would be the cooperation of the executives with the prosecutors or officials, which goes back to why Andrew Fastow only faced 10 years because he took a plea deal. On the other hand I believe 25 years for conspiracy, misrepresentation of statements and 7 counts filing false statements was well deserved because not only did that make a statement to the public, but in the eyes of the law Ebbers should have learnt from “Enron’s”