How Much Culpability Does the Accounting Firm Have for Enrons Collapse?
– By Will McNamara Daily IssueAlert 1/14/2002 Free [News item from CBSMarketWatch.com] The heat on Enron’s auditors went up another notch on Jan. 13 following a report that Arthur Andersen executives issued an order to destroy audit documents just days before Enron posted a $618-million third-quarter loss. According to a Time magazine report citing Congressional investigators, one of Andersen’s lawyers issued a memo to workers, telling them to destroy all audit material, except for the most basic “work papers.” Additionally, the report said, supervisors at Andersen “repeatedly reminded their employees of the document-destruction memo in the weeks leading up to the first Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoenas that were issued on Nov. 8.” Andersen has declined to rule out the possibility that some destruction continued even after that date, the article noted. Analysis: In the deluge of coverage that is taking place on the Enron case, virtually every aspect of the company’s stag
