Timeline9 cases
9/11 era
Enron and WorldCom produced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the USA PATRIOT Act expanded bank due diligence after 9/11, and the 2008 crisis exposed Madoff, Stanford, and Lehman's balance sheet tricks.
Off-balance-sheet partnerships hid debt and inflated earnings; Enron filed for bankruptcy on 2 Dec 2001 and auditor Arthur Andersen collapsed after its 2002 conviction.
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Then the largest US bankruptcy (about $63 billion in assets)Line costs were booked as capital expenses; internal auditor Cynthia Cooper found the entries in June 2002 and the company filed for bankruptcy on 21 July 2002. CEO Bernard Ebbers got 25 years.
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Assets overstated by $11 billion+Italy's dairy giant was declared insolvent in December 2003 after a €3.95 billion Bank of America account letter turned out to be forged; Calisto Tanzi got 10 years.
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€14.3 billion in debtsWashington's embassy bank hid Augusto Pinochet's accounts from regulators and handled Equatorial Guinea oil money; it was fined, pleaded guilty, and was sold to PNC.
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$25 million civil penalty (May 2004); $16 million criminal fine (2005)A junior trader built unauthorized futures positions hidden with fake hedges; the bank found them on 19 Jan 2008 and unwound them in a falling market.
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€4.9 billion loss on positions up to €49.9 billionMadoff confessed and was arrested on 11 Dec 2008; the SEC had received six substantive complaints since 1992, including Harry Markopolos's, and never verified trades with a third party. He got 150 years.
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About $65 billion in fictitious account balances; about $17.5 billion in principalChairman Ramalinga Raju resigned on 7 Jan 2009 and confessed to years of fake revenue and cash balances; he and nine others were convicted in April 2015.
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Accounts manipulated by Rs 7,000 croreThe SEC charged Allen Stanford on 17 Feb 2009 over certificates of deposit sold by his Antigua bank; he was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to 110 years.
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About $8 billion in CDsLehman used Repo 105 transactions to shrink its reported leverage at quarter ends before its September 2008 failure; the bankruptcy examiner's report (11 Mar 2010) found colorable claims against executives and Ernst & Young.
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About $50 billion moved off the balance sheet in Q2 20082000s
Books first, then official reports and court records, then key journalism, grouped by case.
