Glen, I think that article, without seeming indelicate, is a puff piece. It repeats nonsensical buzzwords as if they were Gospel.
This "denial" by the banks, and the accountants, that they were mislead by a forgery of one statement is laughable.
When you buy a lousy home and you need 20,000 lousey dollars IN CASH, what do you think the lender will do? He will call the bank!!!! If you are an AUDITOR!!!!!! what do you think you would do to verify 5 or 10 Billion? You don't look a one lousy bank statement, no matter how forged, in order to do the audit, you have to determine WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM. It is called balancing the books, or double entry book keeping. You check the interest accrued, OVER THE YEARS, and every month... and on and on.
No, it is far more likely that the money was in the bank at one time, but it was seized without the bank telling anyone.
No, the real problem is that that the legislature* has passed laws that to this day, make it impossible to sue the auditors. And without putting too fine a point on it, including Sarbanes Oxley, which tries to shift the blame to the CEO who now has to certify that the audit is correct. (*Bank of America can be sued here, and in Italy, Class Action suits have been outlawed.) Here, they have only been made impossible.
In Techincal Equities, it was a civil suit by a private person and his attorney Joe Cotchett. The won the case and were awarded over 160 Million dollars in damages. The goverment never played a significant leading role.
This is the way to solve these issues, not Government intervention 5 years after the damage and then only popping one or two people out of thousands.
And, if memory serves, Barry Minkow and ZZZZ best didn't make it a year before they were discovered, the auditors were brought in just to certify the company to go public, prior to that it was unaudited. |
