Friday, May 26, 2006
Gallery of Rogues
Lay, Skillings, Ebbers, Kozlowski, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan et al.
Another trial of corporate fraudsters ended with guilty verdicts. Except for the families of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skillings no one will shed tears for them.
There are more, many more. John Schoen's article in MSNBC sums it up well. "The imbalance between the incentive to cheat and the cost for cheating were so great that you got away with scandals, he said. That balance is closer (today), but it doesnt mean we're going to eliminate scandal. In one mushrooming current scandal, federal authorities are investigating stock options granted to top executives at several companies to determine whether those options were backdated to increase the value of those options."
- Worldwide, losses from fraud rose 50 percent from 2003, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
- Globally, the trend is toward an increase in economic crime, not a decrease, the firm found in its 2005 Global Economic Crime Study.
- The report found that, since 2003, the number of companies reporting cases of corruption and bribery rose 71 percent; those reporting cases of money laundering were up 133 percent and reports of financial misrepresentation were up 140 percent.
Bernard Ebbers, Worldcom Corp.
Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco International
Sanjay Kumar, Computer Associates
Giants of banking and brokerage industries penalized for helping Enron to manipulate earnings:
Citigroup
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Settlement negotiations continuing with:
Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
Barclays P.L.C.
Toronto-Dominion Bank
Royal Bank of Canada
Deutsche Bank AG
Royal Bank of Scotland Group P.L.C.
