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...Vinson & Elkins issued a nine-page report stating that Andersen approved of the Condor and Raptor deals and that Enron had done nothing wrong. On Oct. 16 the company announced a $618 million third-quarter loss and a $1.2 billion reduction in shareholder equity. On Oct. 31 the SEC opened a formal inquiry into Enron. Last week, a Vinson & Elkins spokesman said the law firm was "not in a position to talk about our engagement with Enron or any other client...
...represented the Big Five accounting firms before Bush named him to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. Until the Enron scandal broke, Pitt had waved away demands for stronger regulation of corporate accounting and auditing. There were calls from lawmakers for Pitt to recuse himself from the SEC probe of Enron, but Pitt refused--after a fashion, anyway--saying that such a step would hurt the agency's standing. He added, however, that director of enforcement Stephen Cutler would run the probe anyway. Bush last month named two other accounting executives to empty seats on the SEC: Paul...
These rookies, like Pitt, face a rough season. "There could be other Enron-like situations out there," says Arthur Levitt, the activist former SEC chairman. "Financial legerdemain from seduced audit committees, compromised accountants and inadequate standards could certainly crop up again at other U.S. companies." At the moment, the public's best protection against that sort of surprise is other brave whistle-blowers like Sherron Watkins...
...Enron got under way, it felt less like an inquiry and more like a warm, ritual bath designed to soak away the stain of contributions. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who got $2,000 from Enron and $11,500 from Arthur Andersen in the past decade, invited former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, the nation's leading accounting hawk, to do the scrubbing and apply the rinses. That gave Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, who was until recently the subject of a federal probe into his campaign finances, a chance to apologize to Levitt, who had pushed unsuccessfully for lawmakers...
...Kmart proved that point Friday when it instigated - on the slight evidence of a Watkins-style letter from a downsized employee complaining of funny accounting at the now-bankrupt retailer - an internal investigation into its own books (by an outside auditor) and even forwarded the letter to the SEC. House members scared of their own coffers have forced campaign finance reform back onto the agenda. And Wall Street investors are suddenly very interested in old-fashioned notions like "cash flow" and "core business...