Corporate Fraud
When people think about fraud, their minds immediately make up images of shady conmen, extracting money from the elderly and the unsuspecting. A few might conjure images of the sweet talking lad, who swindles money using "schemes" or the new age internet scammer who might use technology to dupe online customers or bankers using various schemes like phishing etc. But the greatest amount of fraud - measured in terms of monetary value - is done by the corporations of the modern world. Let's take a brief look at two of the world's biggest and most high profile corporate frauds in recent times.
Accounting Fraud
The first thing that crops up in the minds of people when the word accounting fraud is mentioned is that of the energy company, Enron. Enron, a multi billion dollar company, was becoming one of the largest energy trading companies in the world. Few suspected that such a huge conglomerate would face one of the biggest crashes in recent history. In fact many magazines had even praised Enron as one of the most innovative companies.. The company had managed to hoodwink everyone, from its employees, to investors to financial analysts and regulators, including the governments of various countries. The reason for the fraud was that the company had, over a period of time, started to lose more money as its cash flow dried up. To cover up the losses, the company, with the connivance of its accountancy firm Arthur Anderson, tried to "cook the books", showing profits out of nowhere and using techniques, that were later described as innovative accounting practices. It was also seriously involved in various bribery scandals in different countries.
As news started to get out via whistle blowers, the company was in deep trouble and it filed for bankruptcy, the largest in American history. Share prices fell from nearly $90 to less than 30 cents as news spread of its failure. Many of its employees - who ironically had rated it as the best company to work for, in a previous report - also found they had lost their entire life savings. Many investors and stakeholders were furious and the crash caused a ripple in the stock markets in 2001. The company and its accountancy firm were soon wound up and criminal investigations were initiated.
A similar method of accounting fraud was carried out by the same consultancy firm, for another company WorldCom, which too defrauded its investors and lost billions of dollars in a similar scheme of manipulating the figures.
Insider trading
Another method of corporate scamming is the insider trading done by many companies. An insider trade involves selling or buying shares of a company, where a person has either exclusive or first access to information that would not be available to the public. This results in an unfair advantage for the person since he/she can dump shares before the collapse or buy them for a cheap rate and sell again after the market turns bullish, depending on the insider "news" on the company. This type of trading is illegal throughout the world. Enron incidentally was involved in insider trading as well. But the most high profile case is that of Martha Stewart, a billionaire whose fortunes were built around advice to homemakers. Martha Stewart, who admitted her guilt and was sentenced to 5 months in jail, sold her shares in a pharmaceutical company ImClone as news that the company's important patent application had been rejected. She managed to sell the shares before the news reached everyone and thus managed to get out before the share prices of the pharmacy company collapsed.
Despite regulations and controls by the authorities, the corporate scandals continue to grow and plague the world. This is partly attributed to the ignorance on the part of investors, the hype surrounding a new/novel approach by a company and plain malice on the part of the promoters, aided by corruption on behalf of the authorities. As long as these things continue to exist corporate frauds will thrive and white collar criminals will make a killing at the expense of everyone.
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