By MARCY GORDON
Associated Press
5/28/2006
WASHINGTON - While the federal government has garnered its
biggest victory from the business scandals of recent years
with the conviction of former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay
and Jeffrey Skilling, prosecutors may have their sights on a
new crop of potential targets.
Newer cases of accounting fraud could bring a fresh set of
company executives into prosecutors’ sights, and a probe of
at least 15 companies for the timing of stock option grants
to their leaders is widening.
This week’s revelations concerning Fannie
Mae - regulators said the mortgage giant manipulated
accounting so that senior executives could collect millions
in bonuses - were a reminder that there’s more out there.
“Corporate corruption is not over,” Sen.
Carl Levin, D-Mich., who investigated many facets of the
Enron tangle, declared Friday.
A four-month-long fraud and conspiracy
trial brought guilty verdicts Thursday against Lay and
Skilling, who could face double-digit prison sentences. The
government’s victory capped a 41/2-year investigation that
garnered 16 guilty pleas from ex-Enron executives. It was
the endgame to a scandal that wiped out more than $60
billion in company market value, nearly $2.1 billion in
employees’ retirement savings, 5,600 jobs and billions in
pension fund holdings across the country.
“The victory, and the visibility of the
victory, is going to encourage prosecutors to take on more
cases that involve very complex financial dealings,” said
James Cox, a professor at Duke University who specializes in
securities law.
For individual executives, there could be
more handcuffs and perp walks on the horizon. “Your risks of
facing serious criminal and civil sanctions are going up
with every successful prosecution by the government,” Cox
said.
The Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law born of
the 2002 wave of business scandals requires CEOs and chief
financial officers to certify in sworn written statements
the accuracy of the company’s financial results - with
possible prison terms for signing statements they knew to be
false.
Regarding Fannie Mae, the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Office of Federal Housing
Enterprise Oversight are looking at the roles of several
current and former executives - including ousted Chairman
Franklin Raines - in the accounting failures and whether
they should be forced to return millions in compensation. A
criminal investigation of the company by the Justice
Department is continuing.
Raines’s attorney, Robert Barnett, said
that Raines “never authorized, encouraged or was aware of
violations” of accounting rules.
The widening investigation of companies
for timing of stock option grants to executives is being
conducted by the SEC and federal prosecutors in New York.
The array of companies - the biggest so far is UnitedHealth
Group Inc. - are being examined to determine whether they
boosted executives’ payoff from stock options by backdating
the grants to coincide with a point where corresponding
stock prices had dropped to lows.
At least 15 companies have received
subpoenas. “I would not be surprised to see it double or
even triple in the coming months,” said Bruce Vanyo, a
securities lawyer at Katten Muchin Rosenman in Los Angeles.
The SEC is also conducting an inquiry
into pension fund accounting at several major companies to
determine whether they are using the funds to manipulate
earnings. They include General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co.,
Delphi Corp., Boeing Co., Navistar International Corp. and
Northwest Airlines Corp.
The agency says it’s examining whether
changes in pension plans can create so-called “cookie jar”
reserves that could be dipped into to bolster revenue in
less profitable times. For example, if a company forecasts
too rosy a rate of return on investments used to fund the
plans, it doesn’t have to set aside as much money to cover
the liabilities. The extra money could be used to inflate
earnings.
So far, there’s no indication when any
charges might come, or who they might be brought against.
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