本文是会计专业的Essay范例，题目是“EnronandWorldComScandals（安然和世界通信公司丑闻）”，我被美国证券交易委员会聘请为欺诈预防和检测专家，帮助为美国证券交易委员会的员工提供培训，让他们了解我们从几起财务报表欺诈事件中学到的教训。当一个组织的雇员或成员故意歪曲他们的财务状况，制造他们财务实力的虚假印象，以吸引更多的投资者时，财务报表欺诈就发生了。在这篇文章中，我想讨论两个主要的组织，安然和世通丑闻。
I have been hired by the SEC as fraud prevention and detection expert to help create training for SEC employees on the lessons we learned from several financial statement frauds. Financial statement fraud occurs when an employee or a member of an organization intentionally misrepresent their financial condition to create a false impression of their financial strengths to lure more investors. In this paper, I want to discuss two major organizations, which are Enron and WorldCom Scandals.
Enron Scandal安然丑闻
The Enron scandal is that the most vital company collapse within the US since the failure of the many savings and loan banks throughout the1980s. In October 2001, Enron an American energy company based in Houston, Texas filed for bankruptcy. This scandal demonstrates the requirement for important reforms in accounting and corporate governance within the United States, in addition as for an in-depth verify the moral quality of the culture of business usually and of business corporations within the United States. The tone at the top, especially Arthur Anderson, the external auditor and a consultant to Enron played a huge role in this collapse. The lack of attention that was shown by board members, executives at Enron about their misleading off the books financial entities, and the lack of truthfulness by management about the health of the company and it’s business operation was also a cause for this scandal. CEO -Jeffrey Skilling and CFO-Andrew Fastow changed the business strategy and corporate culture of Enron to make it more profitable. The senior executives believed Enron had to be the best at everything and that they had to protect their reputations and their compensation as the most successful executives in the U.S. When some of their business and trading ventures began to perform poorly, they tried to cover up their own failures. To hide the failures from the board of directors they pressured Anderson to ignore the issue with the financial reporting.
安然丑闻是自上世纪80年代许多储蓄和贷款银行倒闭以来，美国最重要的公司倒闭事件。2001年10月，位于得克萨斯州休斯敦的美国能源公司安然(Enron)申请破产。这一丑闻表明，除了深入核实美国商业文化和商业公司的道德品质外，还要求对美国国内的会计和公司治理进行重要改革。公司高层的态度，尤其是安然的外部审计师和顾问亚瑟•安德森(Arthur Anderson)，在此次倒闭中扮演了重要角色。安然的董事会成员，高管们对他们在账外的财务实体的误导缺乏关注，管理层对公司的健康状况和业务运作缺乏真实性也是这一丑闻的原因之一。首席执行官杰弗里·斯基林和首席财务官安德鲁·法斯托改变了安然的商业战略和企业文化，使其更有利可图。高管相信安然是最好的一切,他们保护他们的声誉和薪酬作为最成功的高管在美国当他们的商业和贸易的企业开始表现不佳,他们试图掩盖自己的失败。为了向董事会隐瞒这一失误，他们向安德森施压，要求他忽略财务报告的问题。
WorldCom Scandal世通公司的丑闻
WorldCom was once the second-largest telecommunication company in the U.S. WorldCom filed for bankruptcy in 2002 due to a massive accounting scandal. WorldCom executives knowingly misrepresented the company’s accounting numbers, inflating the company’s assets by around $12.8 billion dollars. The WorldCom scandal is considered as one of the worst corporate crimes in history, and several former executives involved in the fraud were held responsible for their involvement. Cynthia Cooper formerly served as the Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom and her team were the first people who uncovered this major fraud. The tone at the top, the former CEO of WorldCom Bernie Ebbers played a huge role was by capitalizing inflated revenues with fake accounting entries, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators and was sentenced to 25 years. The next person to blame was the former CFO of WorldCom; Scott Sullivan received a five-year jail sentence after pleading guilty and testifying against Ebbers. Also, David Myers, former director of General Accounting of WorldCom was sentenced to one year in prison after the fraud incident. Management style consistent with the pressure that created an aggressive and competitive culture that did not contain any communication or ethics in the company culture. Employees were focused on revenues, rather than on profit margins. Lack of integration of accounting system allowed WorldCom employees to move exciting customers accounts from one accounting system to another. Employees had no training or awareness of this fraud or ethics and they were not aware of the consequences that may occur. Overall the culture was toxic and they made themselves believe that their actions were not really illegal, if it profiting the business.
世界通信公司曾是美国第二大通信公司。2002年，世界通信公司因巨额会计丑闻而申请破产。世界通信公司的高管故意歪曲公司的会计数字，将公司的资产夸大了约128亿美元。世界通信公司的丑闻被认为是历史上最严重的公司犯罪之一，几名卷入欺诈的前高管被追究责任。辛西娅·库珀曾担任世界通信公司内部审计副总裁，她的团队是第一个发现这一重大欺诈行为的人。世界通信公司(WorldCom)前首席执行官伯尼·埃伯斯(Bernie Ebbers)在公司高层的言论中扮演了重要角色，他通过伪造会计账目、共谋和向监管机构提交虚假文件来夸大收入，被判处25年有期徒刑。下一个被指责的人是世界通信公司的前首席财务官;斯科特·沙利文在认罪并指证埃伯斯后被判5年监禁。另外，世界通信公司(WorldCom)前会计总负责人大卫•迈尔斯也因欺诈事件被判处1年有期徒刑。管理风格与压力一致，创造了一个积极和竞争的文化，在公司文化中不包含任何沟通或道德。员工关注的是收入，而不是利润率。由于缺乏会计系统的集成，WorldCom的员工可以将客户的帐户从一个会计系统转移到另一个会计系统。员工没有培训或意识到这种欺诈或道德，他们没有意识到可能发生的后果。总的来说，这种文化是有害的，他们让自己相信，如果他们的行为能给生意带来利润，那么他们的行为就不算违法。
The causes of financial statement fraud for both companies were due to pressure from the upper management and to protect the company’s reputation. With Enron, the upper management wanted the Board of directors and investors to think that the company is going to be innovative and profitable. Even after the businesses were failing they had their external auditor to fake the numbers. Andersen should have never been their external auditor since he had a conflict of interest. Part of the auditor’s role is to look into the company internal controls to see how much they can rely on the company’s information based on how strong the controls in place are. Enron clearly had very big weaknesses in its internal controls, and Andersen completed disregarded this step. Andersen itself is also supposed to have strong internal controls, and evidence revealed in the aftermath showed that it did not. This was revealed when the national auditor’s committee wanted Enron to make certain changes but there were no controls in place to change. With WorldCom, they were going through a recession at this point. Due to several low demands and high competition in the telecommunication industry the prices start to fall. WorldCom, CEO Ebbers forced the managers to improve the revenue condition to remain in the business to attract more investors. The internal problem with WorldCom was its lack of competitive strategy, weak internal controls, an aggressive culture that demanded high returns, and the failure to look out for what was best for the stockholder as well as the stakeholder of the company. The competitive culture at WorldCom was characterized by loyalty to management with no regards to ethics, honesty, or integrity. Both companies had no policy on fraud prevention or detection in place to control these situations.
The main key factors resulted in both companies to a collapse: Senior Executives were encouraged to lie, cheat and manipulate records by providing them the high margin of profits. Executives were interested in their personal reward structure ignoring the stakeholders’ benefits. Board members were mostly highly rewarded and consist of the friends, who did not raise questions on any doubtful and ambiguous records. Non-Executive Directors were also highly rewarded and they worked independently. The audit team was bribed to produce a clean audit report. Illegal profits were generated and it was shown that all the policies and rules implemented from the top were for the benefit of the company and shareholders, and hence, were ethical.
导致这两家公司倒闭的主要关键因素是:公司鼓励高管撒谎、欺骗和通过向他们提供高利润率来篡改记录。高管们只关心他们的个人报酬结构，而忽略了利益相关者的利益。董事会成员大多薪酬丰厚，由朋友组成，他们不会对任何可疑和模糊的记录提出问题。非执行董事也获得了很高的报酬，他们独立工作。审计组受到贿赂，以产生一份干净的审计报告。非法利润产生了，这表明所有从高层执行的政策和规则都是为了公司和股东的利益，因此是合乎道德的。
Enron and WorldCom need to strengthen their oversight by eliminating inaccurate financial practices that would result in a misleading financial statement. Practice ongoing compensation plans and payments rather than the extreme executive compensation plans for employees and management team. Enron should not have hired outside auditors to become a part of the consulting team. Both companies need to strengthen their independence by having the board and directors to be free of material financial ties to the company. Also having the audit committee to oversee the financial statement and accounting practices and also giving them the authorization to fire and hire outside auditors. To prevent future fraud for both companies, they should follow these six steps: know your employees, make employees aware of the reporting system, implement internal controls, monitor vacation balances, hire external auditors, and have a culture that creates positive work environment. The management team has huge responsibilities to implement this prevention and detection to avoid fraud.
安然和世通需要加强他们的监督，消除不准确的财务做法，会导致误导性的财务报表。为员工和管理团队实施持续的薪酬计划和支付，而不是极端的高管薪酬计划。安然公司不应该聘请外部审计师成为咨询团队的一员。这两家公司都需要通过让董事会和董事与公司脱离实质性的财务联系来加强自己的独立性。还有审计委员会监督财务报表和会计操作，并授权他们解雇和聘用外部审计师。为了防止两家公司未来的欺诈行为，他们应该遵循以下六个步骤:了解你的员工，让员工意识到报告系统，实施内部控制，监督假期余额，聘请外部审计师，并拥有创造积极工作环境的文化。管理团队在实施这种预防和检测以避免欺诈方面负有巨大的责任。
With both companies, management could have adopted better accounting practices to avoid this fraud. Unfortunately in this case management believes that the function of a corporation is to reward upper management, rather than to maximize the profit of the company’s shareholder. Independent auditors made much more money from consulting than they did from the audit. There were pressure and opportunity from upper management for them to make more money if they would work with them to misrepresent the financial statement. There are a couple of ways to management can prevent future fraudulent activity. First, it is important to hire honest people and train them in fraud awareness and to present a code of conduct or ethics that is not only stated on a piece of paper but is truly respected and followed by other employees including top management. Second, a positive work environment must be created. Third employees must b provided with assistance programs. Implementing a code of ethics and having employees read and sign it periodically can reinforce ethical conduct as well emphasize that it is important to the company.
对于这两家公司，管理层本可以采取更好的会计做法来避免这种欺诈行为。不幸的是，在这个案例中，管理层认为公司的功能是奖励高层管理人员，而不是公司股东的利润最大化。独立审计师从咨询中赚到的钱远远多于他们从审计中赚到的钱。如果他们愿意和他们一起伪造财务报表，他们就会有来自上层管理阶层的压力和机会来赚更多的钱。有几种管理方法可以防止未来的欺诈活动。首先，重要的是要聘用诚实的人，培训他们的欺诈意识，并提出一套行为准则或道德规范，不仅要写在纸上，而且要得到包括高层管理人员在内的其他员工的真正尊重和遵守。第二，必须创造一个积极的工作环境。第三，必须为员工提供援助计划。实施道德规范，并让员工定期阅读和签署，可以加强道德行为，并强调它对公司的重要性。
After this scandal SEC passed the law to protect the investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of the disclosures made by publicly traded companies. Section 301, gives audit committees more independence and responsibilities to strengthen the role to advise and oversee the auditors work and ensure the conflict of interest would not occur. Also, the external auditors are required to report directly to the audit committee and not the top management to ensure independence. Section 404 of the act directly impacts the auditing practices and to improve the quality of financial reporting. The goal for the Sarbanes and Oxley Act of 2002 is to increase the confidence in investors and to ensure proper reporting system. The Act was able to implement actionable structures that could reduce the numerous fraudulent activities that have been reported in the past. This act also protects external auditors to work independently and not to rely on the work of internal auditors.
在这起丑闻之后，美国证券交易委员会通过了一项法律，通过提高上市公司披露信息的准确性和可靠性来保护投资者。301条款赋予审计委员会更多的独立性和责任，以加强其提供咨询和监督审计人员工作的作用，并确保不会发生利益冲突。此外，外部审计师被要求直接向审计委员会报告，而不是最高管理层，以确保独立性。该法案第404条直接影响审计实践和提高财务报告的质量。2002年的萨班斯和奥克斯利法案(Sarbanes and Oxley Act)的目标是增强投资者的信心，并确保适当的报告制度。该法案能够实施可起诉的结构，从而减少过去所报告的许多欺诈活动。该法案还保护外部审计人员独立工作，不依赖内部审计人员的工作。
In conclusion, most of these fraudulent activities come from companies where there is no structure. Employees might not be aware of the laws and regulation that is being set forth by the government. In the case of Enron and WorldCom, they had a corrupt environment, which leads the shareholders to lose billions of dollars. However at the end of the day, there are still other ways in which companies can deceive others, and the Act does not cover everything that could take place. In corporate American, the trust is slowly building back up again after these scandals as well as the recession in 2008. It’s a work in process and most companies could takeaway lessons from these scandals and to avoid them in the future.
综上所述，这些欺诈活动大多来自没有结构的公司。员工可能不知道政府制定的法律法规。在安然和世通的案例中，他们有一个腐败的环境，导致股东损失数十亿美元。然而，在一天结束的时候，公司仍然可以通过其他方式欺骗他人，该法案并没有涵盖所有可能发生的事情。在美国企业界，在这些丑闻和2008年的经济衰退之后，信任正在慢慢地重新建立起来。这是一个正在进行的工作，大多数公司可以从这些丑闻中吸取教训，并在未来避免它们。
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