Word: andersen
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...remains to be seen whether Duncan was covering his own trail (as Andersen declared Wednesday when it fired him and handed the feds his scalp as a peace offering) or just taking an obvious hint from a destruction-policy memo from an Andersen lawyer, which was the story Duncan was telling congressional investigators deep into Wednesday night. But he sure knew enough to go on a shredding-and-deleting rampage that, the firm says, lasted from Oct. 23 to "shortly after" Nov. 9, the day the SEC sent over its subpoena...
...full disclosure does eventually come to those who wait. Enron's debt-concealing, off-the-balance-sheet partnerships (which Enron's pet law firm says were "creative and aggressive" but not illegal) and warped revenue yardsticks eventually brought it down, and now we all know about them. Arthur Andersen's reputation as an honest accountant is now permanently tarred, and it will suffer at Wall Street's hands for devaluing its auditor's seal of approval. (As a consultant, though, you've got to love the way they go that extra mile...
...punishments of the legal variety, with their pick of Wadkins, Duncan, Andersen's now-suspended Houston management team and disgruntled employees of both sinking ships, federal and congressional investigators have their pick of potential squealers. Despite - or because of - the political largesse of both companies (Andersen's own campaign checkbook graced 94 of 100 U.S. Senators), the political heat will be turned up high, and Justice's own little bedfellow problem (Andersen is helping them reorganize the FBI) shouldn't prevent them from collecting plenty of arrests in the name of George W. Bush's integrity. For the wrongdoers...
...reputations and fortunes of Andersen or Enron that policy people at say, the Treasury Department are worried about - it's that of accounting, and investing, in general. Speaking to (and well beyond) a group of life insurers Wednesday, Treasury undersecretary Peter Fisher bemoaned that the science of making gobs of money had advanced well beyond the science of telling investors "the riskiness of that firm's activities" - just how, exactly, a company was making those gobs of money...
...Because while Sherron Wadkins certainly seems to have been a conscientious employee with a sharp eye for trouble, whistle-blowing isn't whistle-blowing if only Ken Lay and some Arthur Andersen partners - who probably didn't need the advice and certainly didn't follow it - heard the noise. Blowing the whistle on Enron's creative accounting, however, wasn't Wadkins' job. It was the job of the certified public accountants - the outside auditors - at Arthur Andersen...