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Impact of Unethical Behavior

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Impact of Unethical Behavior
Shavonne Ware
February 12, 2012
Acc/291 Mrs. Adkins

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, also known as SOA, was passed due to the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Tyco and Arthur Andersen, that resulted in billions of dollars in corporate and investor losses. These huge losses negatively impacted the financial markets and general investor trust. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates a wide-sweeping accounting framework for all public companies doing business in the US. After so many investor loss their investment the government felt as though they had to do something about the way companies are being ran, this act was solely put together to protect the investor.
After this act was passed all public companies will be required (for the first time) to submit an annual assessment of the effectiveness of their internal financial auditing controls to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Additionally, each company's external auditors are required to audit and report on the internal control reports of management, in addition to the company’s financial statements. The effect this had on financial statement was that everyone had to begin to report a more accurate account of the company earning was for the year. These statements had to go to the federal government and be in compliance with the SOA or the company would have to answer to someone higher than the CEO. I think that this was a good thing because the accountant in the company’s can no longer summit false documents and get away with it. The passing of this act gave the employees of the company a fair opportunity to be employed before the SOA Company’s would fold and no one knew why because the financial statements could be misleading and no one would know because there was no one to be accountable to.
These was some of the reason that the government introduce

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