One of the worst scandals in American history was Enron. It seemed as though the company was running smoothly. It was making an enormous amount of profit and the stock just keep rising, at one point it was priced at $83.13. It seemed as though Enron was doing everything right. But this wasn’t the case Enron was modifying their balance sheet to show a favorable profit when they were slowly going down the tubes. Jeffery Skilling was one of the secret minds behind these corrupt actions. In May 2006 Skilling was convicted of 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, and insider trading and lying to auditors. The following is an article about Skilling’s appeal of charges of honest services. Honest services fraud is a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the "intangible right of honest services." Included under the concept are schemes to deprive the people or the government of the right to have public officials perform their duties honestly.
I found this article to be quite interesting. I feel that the Supreme Court made the right chose of convicting Skilling, the former CEO of Enron of honest services fraud. I hope that they end up not overruling their decision. I say this because Jeffery Skilling knew their true financial situation and he hid all that information from the shareholders and employees. He also was an advocate in addressing to the public that Enron was doing great and you should buy stock in it. Jeff Skilling wasn’t honest to the community. He lied to all those people that trusted in his judgment. He should have known better therefore I believe that he shouldn’t get this charge dropped.
What do all of you think of the ruling to revisit this case? Do you believe that Skilling has an agreement or not?
Enron was an ethical scandal that will never be forgotten. The ethics that Enron broke were there were purely executive in nature; there was lack of integrity, responsibility, creativity and control. The employees of Enron wanted to grow with the company; therefore they were willing to look over some signs that seemed to be questionable. The Ethics of the company always begins at the top, the CEO Skilling. Enron had poor judgment and committed out right illegal behavior. Enron showed profit on their financial sheets as they were going into bankruptcy. The poor ethics committed by Enron lead the government to put in place the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
-Mitchell Terry
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