SEC Targets More Fortune 500 Names

[54anickel]

http://maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=6172

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is bringing more financial fraud cases against big-name, Fortune 500 companies, said a top SEC enforcement official on Saturday.

Equipped with a bigger staff and faced with a wave of corporate scandals, the SEC brought 199 financial fraud cases in 2003, and 34 of them involved Fortune 500 companies, said Susan Markel, SEC Enforcement Division chief accountant.

snip>
In 1998, only four of the SEC's 79 financial fraud cases involved Fortune 500 companies. That represented 5 percent of the fraud caseload in that year, versus 17 percent in 2003.

Until its recent sharp budget increases, the SEC had been reluctant to take on the armies of lawyers fielded by major corporations, but that's changing, securities lawyers said.

[Homer12]

1. I wonder how many are democratic contributers?

[Jackpine Radical]

2. That might make for an interesting little study.

Unfortunately, publishing the results might have the unintended side effect of scaring off what little Democratic corporate money there is.

[cosmicdot]

3. "Equipped with a bigger staff"

corruption, scandal and fraud created jobs!