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Enron Scandal

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Enron Corporation was established in 1985 by Ken Lay after merging Houston Natural Gas and Internorth, it has more than 20,000 employees and it's one of the seven largest electricity, natural gas company. Before it went to bankruptcy, Enron claimed revenues of almost $101 billion in 2000, placed Enron at sixth on the Fortune Global 500, it also named "America's most innovative company" for the past six years(1996-2001). In 10/22/2001, The "street.com website pronounced a message revealed the complex financial transaction between Enron and Osprey Co., through Osprey, Enron debited 340 billion dollars"○1 which never appeared in the financial statement. At the same time, SEC began to investigate Enron, thus, the Enron's accounting scandal finally above the water. The first person who became the whistleblower disclosure Enron's financial fraud was Watkins and Cooper, although the CFO asked cooper to postpone her investigation, Cooper still doing her audit to alert the board about the financial statement problems, at the meantime, Watkins outlined the problems in a memo to Ken Lay, "but by the time Watkins and Cooper blew the whistle, much damage had already been done and the shareholders and employees were the ultimate losers."○2 Whistleblower program is very important to minimum a corporation's hazardous activities, but the blower often face some awkward situations, such as fear of the manager's retaliation, fear to be treat as a betrayer by the workmates, unwilling to be a snitch and so on. To fix these situations and finally enhance financial report, we should first establish a company's whistleblowing culture, that means encourage employee to investigate and report flaws they find and give reward instead of punishment, also, the management need to demonstrate a strong will to commit the whistleblow policy, promptly investigate the report and give feedback.

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