Sarbanes Oxley Act Summary

One of the purposes of the Sarbanes Oxley Act was to place the accountability of the company’s financial records on the executives of the company. SOX clearly states if the records are false the executives are personally liable. One would hope this would deter fraud within the executive departments. This obviously didn’t prevent Elles and Pacifico from moving forward with the scheme.
Ethical leadership is one of the most important controls a company can have in place because the quality of the organization depends on it. Internal controls, management ethics, and an external auditing policy is a way to deal with poor management and accountability. In the case of Elles and Pacifico those controls simply didn’t work. The ramifications for Carter’s
Incorporated could have been much worse had they not reported the fraudulent activity to SEC and cooperated with their investigation. Carter’s continues to work with the SEC and has been more proactive in their auditing and detecting procedures since being investigated.