Enron: Fraud Detection Timeliness

Abstract

This paper examines one of the biggest corporate bankruptcies in the history of the United States of America. The United States of America witnessed the biggest corporate collapse in its corporate history in the early days of December, 2001, which sent shock waves across the whole business world. Enron, until the collapse, was held in high esteem by well-known corporate observers, analysts and corporate rating agencies in the United States of America. The paper looks at the history of Enron, from formation till time of filing for bankruptcy and beyond, with main emphasis placed on the period between 1997 and 2001, during when it is believed, the main fraud and manipulations occurred, which resulted in the collapse of the company and its attendant negative impact on the company’s shareholders, employees and the investing public as a whole. The main thrust of the paper is determination of the earliest possible time at which the fraud that took place in Enron could have been detected, using the financial statements and records filed by Enron in the U.S. SEC Edgar database. The exercise is conducted with the aid of some well-known fraud detection tools and guidelines propounded by some renowned fraud experts. The paper explains how certain top executives used loopholes in the available principles and rules governing the accounting profession in the United States to exploit, manipulate and cheat on several people and institutions to cause major harm, particularly to employees and shareholders, who lost billions of their life-time savings, investment and pension. The case of Enron, as analyzed by the paper, shows how greed served as the main factor in the ill-fated and ill-conceived initiatives of some of the top executives of Enron, who engaged in the massive fraud, whilst managing to gain some apparent support from both internal and external high-powered officials and institutions. The collapse of Enron serves as a major lesson point for all institutions and the public as a whole, particularly, institutions who are charged with the duty to protect the investing public, employees and shareholders from unscrupulous public corporations. It is not surprising that, as noted in this paper, at the post Enron’s collapse, the United States began to strengthen its corporate governance regime, including introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which among others, aims at ensuring independence of external auditors from their clients, strengthening the oversight duties of corporate board of directors, enhancing disclosure requirements by public corporations and improving the overall controls needed to prevent and detect material errors, misstatements and falsification of financial records and statements by corporations for the whims and caprices of the very people charged with the duty of managing affairs of corporations.