WorldCom was one of the leading telecommunications companies during the 1990s, but in 2001, the company began inflating its earnings through the manipulation of financial data. This scandal was led by Scott Sullivan, the company’s chief financial officer. Sullivan and his team spread billions of dollars in operating expenses across multiple accounts, extending them for years. This allowed WorldCom to inflate its revenue by nearly $3 billion in 2001. As a result, the company reported a $1.4 billion profit instead of a $1 billion loss.
Enron
The Enron scandal has become one of the most notorious financial scandals of all time, and there are a number of reasons why this company went bust. The debacle seems to have been caused by greed, corporate arrogance, and a lack of trust in the company itself. The company made a number of high-risk investments that were beyond its control, and its stock price and debt rating eventually collapsed.
One of the key reasons that Enron went bust was because of its faulty accounting practices. The company used mark-to-market accounting to disguise losses and avoid disclosure requirements. This allowed Enron to manipulate their accounts and make false claims to investors. Enron also abused special-purpose entities, or SPEs, created to act as external equity investors.
Enron was one of the largest companies in the United States when it went bust. The company’s leadership misled regulators by using off-the-books accounting and fake holdings to hide its losses. The company paid out more than $21.7 billion to its creditors, and it was later forced to shut down.
Enron’s bankruptcy paved the way for major changes in business financial practices. It also led to the demise of the giant accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Enron was a publicly-traded company in Houston, Texas, which was involved in a variety of energy-related enterprises. It was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2001. Its collapse caused the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in pension benefits.
The Enron financial crisis is comparable to the global financial crisis in many ways. The company was doomed to collapse and left a trail of economic destruction for others. In a recent interview with Marketplace’s David Brancaccio, Barbara McLean discussed the legacy of the Enron scandal and why she started looking into the company’s financials before the company’s public disclosure.
Enron was created in 1985 through the merger of Houston Natural Gas Corporation and InterNorth, Inc. The two companies had a lot of debt and were losing the rights to operate pipelines. This led the company to seek a new business strategy. CEO Kenneth Lay hired the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., and Jeffrey Skilling was assigned to help him turn the company around.
Teapot Dome
The Teapot Dome scandal is considered one of the most famous scandals of all time. It was a bribery scandal, and the victims were oil company executives. The scandal occurred in the 1920s, and involved the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall. He had signed no-bid contracts to lease oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to a private company. The scandal led to a congressional investigation. Fall was found guilty of bribery, and paid Sinclair and Doheny over $100,000 to approve the leases.
The scandal was a direct result of the 1920 presidential election, which saw oil companies buy elections. Following the primaries, a series of congressional investigations were launched. Progressives accused the Harding convention of being influenced by oilmen who wanted to roll back progressive conservation measures. One of those oilmen was oilman Bill Doheny, who had enormous investments in oil in Mexico. He wanted to influence United States policy in that country. He donated money to both political parties.
While the Teapot Dome Scandal involved big oil companies and bribery at the highest levels of government, it is arguably the greatest scandal in U.S. history, second only to Watergate. The scandal was named for an oil reserve near a rock formation in Wyoming, which resembled a teapot. Although the oil reserve was discovered decades before the scandal began, it was still a huge problem for the U.S. Navy, which subsequently lost its monopoly of oil reserves in the area.
The Teapot Dome lease was controversial and was a significant part of the political landscape for almost a decade. This scandal led to the emergence of special prosecutors that supervised the leasing of the Naval Reserves. They charged Fall and Doheny with conspiracy to defraud the United States and bribery. These men were sentenced to prison.
Among the greatest scandals of all time, the Teapot Dome is widely considered to be the most controversial in American history. It was the first time a cabinet official had been jailed for a felony while in office. The scandal continued to dominate American politics until President Richard Nixon began the Watergate Investigations in the 1970s.
Bernie Madoff
A slew of questions has surrounded Bernard Madoff, one of the most prominent financial scandals in recent history. The alleged scam involved a Ponzi scheme in which new investment funds were used to pay double-digit returns to older investors. In one case, an account in Israel received a 12% return, but most individual investors have reported no returns at all.
The alleged fraud involved billions of dollars in investment funds. The victims lost almost all of their money, and Madoff ended up pleading guilty to eleven federal felony counts. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison and forfeited over $170 billion in investments. The scandal has tarnished the reputations of investment firms and accounting. It also exposed the underlying culture of greed on Wall Street.
Some people were skeptical, and they concluded that Madoff’s promises of investment returns were unsubstantiated. The financial magazine Barron’s published an article casting doubt on Madoff’s integrity, and financial analyst Harry Markopolos repeatedly presented evidence to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Markopolos published a comprehensive investigation of Madoff’s behavior in 2005.
After the fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission began taking action to protect investors. One of the first steps was the Dodd-Frank Act, also known as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This act imposed new registration and reporting requirements for financial firms. In addition, it gave the SEC the authority to monitor financial firms that pose a systemic risk.