Wednesday
Jan072004
Welcome
Wednesday, January 7, 2004 at 1:27PM I have created this site principally as an experiment to see what can be done with blogging tools and news feeds to aggregate information on corporate fraud. Please excuse the temporary nature of the site. I would rather keep the experiment public so that others can comment and help me create a uselful site. The other site where I first tested this is my Corporate Fraud Blog using blogger. I quickly found, however, that blogger had very limited tools,though it is free. Let me hear from you.
Reader Comments (2)
Ordinary folks always seem to love the latest villains of U.S. corporate world.
By any means I don't consider myself a feminist activist, but upon hearing the news on Martha Stewart, I couldn’t help but compare her with Kenneth Lay. Corporate world is still dominated by males and any female breakthrough is encountered with veiled male hostility. We are more inclined to view females in an unfavorable light; whereas we tend to somehow justifying males’ conduct.
First let’s take a quick look at Martha Stewart’s case. From the media we know that she was convicted last March of lying to investigators about why she sold 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems stock in December 2001 just before its price plunged. A judge denied her plea for a retrial. Now Martha Stewart is in W. Va. prison serving a five-month sentence.
Next, I’d like to point out that even her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, who was also convicted of lying to investigators and received the same sentence, but he still remains free trying to appeal his case. Well, the flip-flops of the same coin…
Moving on, let’s bring the issue of justice to light. Is Ken Lay of demised Enron a criminal? According to the press, the current set of indictments against Lay may have even less merit than the government's indictment and subsequent conviction of Martha Stewart. Yes, that is correct; it is suggested that Kenneth Lay may not have committed any crimes. And this is disturbing, to say the least. As we already know, it took a long time to put together a case against Lay. Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was finally indicted by grand jury on 11 criminal counts, including bank fraud, securities fraud, and making misleading statements. But the lawyers say that indictment itself presents a weak legal case. This is peculiarly unpleasant. But why to increase the nation's prison population with white-collar males?
Understandably by what she did, Martha Stewart destroyed more lives of her shareholders than Kenneth Lay’s unawareness of what was going on under his nose at Enron.
It seems to me this is a two-fold approach…