Sherron Watkins was an Enron executive who tried to warn Chief Executive Officer Ken Lay the company’s books were being manipulated. Watkins said her concerns were initially dismissed.
“My biggest disappointment is that I was really not believed,” Watkins said.
In 2001, Watkins says she felt like the Greek parable of Cassandra; cursed with knowing the future but no one believing her prophecies.
“No one believed me in the Fall of 2001,” she said. “They just acted as if this was a minor hiccup in the road and could be handled with some good PR.”
Watkins said she remembers the meeting she had with Enron founder Ken Lay.
She discovered Enron’s accounting manipulations were hiding massive debt while overinflating how much money the company was actually making.
“I did come armed with a lot of memos, evidence, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints,” she said.
Watkins added that she also remembers thinking Lay was taking her seriously, then he asked her whether she thought Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow was doing a good job.
“I was just dumbfounded, you know? I’ve just sat here and told [him] how the Chief Accounting Officer and Chief Financial Officer have cooked the books; you can’t then conclude they’re doing a good job,” Watkins said. “It’s the most bizarre question I’ve ever received, and it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around why that question came out of his...
A British science journalist-turned-attorney who initiated a lawsuit that saw a Harvard University-affiliated cancer centre pay $15 million (11 million) to settle claims of alleged data misreprese...