4/13/2002
Just read this article, by Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, and it's an article that really needs to be spread around. The Justice Department, it's been reported, may accede to Arthur Andersen's request to defer the prosecution of their now-confessed criminal actions in destroying tons of incriminating evidence of Enron's fraudulent accounting. As Mokhiber and Weissman make painstakingly clear, this is an avenue by which the confessedly felonious firm has a chance to escape ever being prosecuted for the massive, systematic public fraud involved in keeping Enron's books--a fraud that stole the livelihoods and pensions of thoudsands and thousands of innocent citizens. The authors emphasize that the legal provision for deferred prosecution (which Andersen has successfully perverted once before, only a few years ago) is intended for skipping the trouble of insignificant trials, to free up resources for conducting big ones.
This is clearly a big one, though, isn't it?
If you have a sturdy stomach, have a quick look-see at Andersen's own stated reasons for requesting such gentle treatment (authored by one Richard J. Favretto, specifically). Unctious, vile snobbishness from end to end; the speech of those who are willing to say absolutely anything they think will work, rife with a sense of entitlement, and with a shocking degree of vanity. In one early highlight, Mr. Favretto argues that were the government to undertake any course of action that caused the company to go under, it would "greatly diminish the chance for necessary reform of the accounting profession." He says nothing to explain how this could possibly be, mind you. I suppose the implication is that because Arthur Andersen is such a cornerstone of the accounting business, the rest of the industry would be lost without its leadership, helpless to reform unaided.
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Favretto, but I think most Americans would likely agree with me: that almost anyone is more able to undertake a reform than a company known to be run by inveterate, recidivist crooks. We do not, in short, need your deeply and lastingly corrupted firm to instruct us in improving our ethics. It is not even amusing for you to suggest that we might.
To put this in another light, think of how we treat much, much smaller crimes (or no crime). Possession of a small quantity of the mild psychoactive drug marijuana, for example, carries a mandatory minimum sentence in prison. How many people are hurt by this crime, as opposed to the number hurt by the systematic fraud of Arthur Andersen, for which they propose not to be punished at all?
And yet the government seemingly considers letting them off the hook. Not because we need them for anything, folks. Society has absolutely no need of a fat, rich, crooked company cooking the books of other fat rich crooked companies. Please, don't save them on our account.
But if not for us, then for whose sake would Ashcroft and company want to let these confessed felons slide on such grave and far-reaching charges?
That's pathetic, Miriam called from the next room when I told her what I was reading.
No, that's complicity, I answered. Not an answer I like--but what else makes any sense?