What Happened to Arthur Andersen?
In March 2002, the federal government indicted Arthur Andersen for obstruction of justice. The indictment alleged that Arthur Andersen continued to shred documents and delete computer files relating to its audit client, Enron, after it was aware that civil litigation and government investigations were imminent and even after Enron had received an informal request for information from the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the indictment, Arthur Andersen’s destruction of Enron documents ceased only after it was served with a subpoena from the SEC. Arthur Andersen claimed, among other responses, that destruction of the Enron information was performed pursuant to Arthur Andersen’s document retention policy. On June 15, 2002, a jury convicted Arthur Andersen. (Interestingly, reports of post-trial interviews with jurors indicate that the jurors did not focus on shredded or deleted documents or computer files to convict the company. Rather, jurors said they based their decision
