How serious can a failure in record retention policy be?
A convincing argument can be made that the root cause of Arthur Andersen’s collapse was a failure to follow prudent record retention procedures. While there were many other issues involved that might have had serious consequences, it was the ill-conceived, hasty document shredding that first raised a public outcry and created an appearance of wrongdoing and cover-up — whatever the reality might have been. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), written in the post-Enron climate, focuses an extraordinary amount of attention on records. More significantly, SOX includes penalties of fines and imprisonment of up to 20 years for anyone who intentionally “alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies or makes a false entry in any record, document or tangible object” so as to “impede, obstruct or influence” an investigation. “Federal sentencing guidelines under SOX are enough to deter anyone from breaking the rules,” says Hayes MacArthur, Director of Human Resources at Amper, Politziner
