Enron Scandal

Ethics is a system of moral principles. The society depends on ethics from people, companies and the government in order for a civilized world. What happens when an unethical behavior is done? What if it is done by a large corporation, large enough to hurt the economy? The Enron scandal is an example of a historical exposure of unethical behaviors within a company and it is also one of the largest corporate scandals in America. Enron started as a gas pipeline company. It soon expanded into the world’s largest and dominant corporation focusing on trading gas, electricity and water – the most essential needs of a citizen living in North America. In December of 2001 Enron filed for bankruptcy. The moral concern from this scandal was the immoral practices that Enron acted upon from the pressure of potential bankruptcy and mere greed for more profit. Enron ; being the ambitious company and profit hungry corporation expanded into new areas besides gas pipelines at an alarming rate. This was the initiating mistake; Enron bit too much that it could chew. Many of the markets it established did not work. One of the largest contributions towards bankruptcy was due to the wrong doings of the accountants. The Bookeepers wrote false statements about the profits, the losses and charges that Enron had received. Enron partnered up with one of the largest accounting firms in North America. At that time which was Arthur Anderson Inc. After much investigation it was revealed that Arthur Anderson Inc, had hidden all different kinds of losses. , Anderson had shredded documents and erased computer files about the accounting at Enron. Its vaunted cash flow came from spurious accounting. It would sell a subsidiary that was losing money to another company - a shell company which Enron set up, owned and financed. That way, the losses were erased from Enron's balance sheet, and in their place was a 'cash inflow' from the shell company Enron had created. (The balance sheets