John Rigas and his family are the centerpiece of the Adelphia scandal, which is regarded as one of the most elaborate and extensive accounting frauds in history. In 1952, the founder John Rigas purchased a cable company for three hundred dollars. Twenty years later, he created Adelphia Communications corporations and the company went public. With the help of his family, it eventually grew to be the nation’s 6th largest cable company. John’s sons Timothy, Michael, James and Peter all held executive positions in the company and were members of the board of directors. Timothy and Michael served as Adelphia’s CFO and COO, respectively. This gave the Rigases majority in both the voting stock and on the board. Adelphia was effectively controlled by the Rigas family. …show more content…
His family were often describes as down to earth people, yet the Rigas family lived a lavish lifestyle. Their riches allowed them to acquire “a professional hockey team, an African safari, the use of three private jets, and swanky vacation homes in hot spots like Cancun, Mexico” (Hudson). Other outlandish expenditures included the construction of a private golf course, the order of fresh Christmas trees to be flown to New York, and the purchase of parcels of land outside of their estate in order to keep their view. The Rigases were able to afford all of this by illegally tapping into corporate funds. By keeping Adelphia within the family’s control, they were able to use the corporation to issue the family personal loans. They also commingled the family’s money with Adelphia’s to fund non-corporate projects. The Rigases were able to acquire all of the aforementioned real estate property by using Adelphia’s funds, which were not the Rigases to spend. As a publicly traded company, the Rigases were essentially using the shareholders’
The purchase of the parent company would be financed with all equity. An individual or team of investors would pay the purchase price and they would receive equity in the Runway Fashion Exchange parent company. The value of the equity would increase as the compan...
John Rigas started Adelphia Communcations in 1952 with the help of two partners, but soon bought it out. The company was taken public in 1986 and as a result would have to abide by the regulations of the SEC. By the early 2000s, Adelphia was one of the top cable companies in the United States. This was the peak of a corporation that would begin a downward spiral over the first half of 2002 as a result of fraudulent use of the company’s assets at its’ shareholders expense. Members of the Rigas family drove the company to bankruptcy through rampant spending of company funds on personal expenditures (Barlaup, 2009). These expenditures included the likes of gross misuse of the company’s aircraft for personal trips by members of the Rigas family and the construction of a personal golf course on the family’s private land (Markon, 2002). This was accomplished after careful manipulation of the company’s reported numbers and fabrication of transactions within the company. Co-borrowing and self-dealing were commonplace in this time period that resulted in over 2 billion dollars’ worth of debt. All this was done under the nose of shareholders and culminated in an insurmountable debt that would lead the company to bankruptcy and to the imprisonment of multiple members of the Rigas family (Barlaup, 2009).
Title: Corruption of the Soviet System in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
...FO at the Houston airport. While Mr. Fastow's parents were undergoing a random search, he stopped to chat with Mr. Schwieger. "I never got an opportunity to explain the partnerships to you," he said, according to Mr. Schwieger. Mr. Schwieger replied, "With everything that has come to light, I probably wouldn't like the answer I would have gotten."
Corruption is an individual and institutional process where there is a gain by a public official from a briber and in return receives a service. Between the gain and the service, there is an improper connection, (Thompson p.28). The two major categories of bribery is individual and institutional corruption. Receiving personal goods for the pursuit of one’s own benefit is personal fraud. An example of individual distortion is the financial scandal involving David Durenberger. Organizational corruption involves “receiving goods that are useable primarily in the political process and are necessary for doing a job or are essential by-products of doing it,” (Thompson p.30). An instance of institutional fraud is the Keating Five case. There are also times where there is a mixture of both individual and organizational corruption in a scandal. An example of this diverse combination is James C. Wright Jr. actions while he was the Speaker of the House.
“From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law.” -Leon Jaworski, special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.
The Enron scandal is one of the biggest scandals to take place in in American history. Enron was once one of the biggest companys in the world. It was the 6th largest energy company in the world. Due to Enron’s downfall investors of the company lost nearly 70 billion dollars. This was all due to many illegal activities done by Eron's employees. One of these employees was Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer of the Enron corporation had a lot to do with the collapse of the Enron company.
The corporation’s business is carried out by its management, under the direction of the Board of Directors. The Board, and each committee of the Board, has complete access to management. Also, the Board and committee member’s has access to independent advisors as each considers necessary or appropriate. Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt (2010) state that the Board of Directors also, issues shares, Adopts articles of merger or sha...
Stanley, Thomas J., and William D Danko. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy. Atlanta, Ga.: Longstreet Press, 1996.
The Watergate Scandal was one of the biggest and first scandals in United States History. Nixon’s political rivals were recorded and harassed. Nixon was a very paranoid man, and the Democratic National Committee was bugged at the Watergate Hotel, there were also bugs at the White House. Five burglars were caught doing so and it was later realized that Nixon was connected to the scandal. It was proved that Nixon had a very big role behind all of the issues around Watergate and he felt guilty enough to resign. One can say that the resignation of Richard Nixon can be credited to the pressures imposed on him by the congress, the press, and the courts.
Bernard Madoff had full control of the organizational leadership of Bernard Madoff Investments Securities LLC. Madoff used charisma to convince his friends, members of elite groups, and his employees to believe in him. He tricked his clients into believing that they were investing in something special. He would often turn potential investors down, which helped Bernard in targeting the investors with more money to invest. Bernard Madoff created a system which promised high returns in the short term and was nothing but the Ponzi scheme. The system’s idea relied on funds from the new investors to pay misrepresented and extremely high returns to existing investors. He was doing this for years; convincing wealthy individuals and charities to invest billions of dollars into his hedge fund. And they did so because of the extremely high returns, which were promised by Madoff’s firm. If anyone would have looked deeply into the structure of his firm, it would have definitely shown that something is wrong. This is because nobody can make such big money in the market, especially if no one else could at the time. How could one person, Madoff, hold all of his clients’ assets, price them, and manage them? It is clearly a conflict of interest. His company was showing high profits year after year; despite most of the companies in the market having losses. In fact, Bernard Madoff’s case is absolutely stunning when you consider the range and number of investors who got caught up in it.
The Case "Lincoln Savings and Loan Association" presents an individual named Charles Keating Jr. that was an intelligent law graduate and leading critic of the pornography industry, which became the commissioner of pornography to President Nixon and later a business owner. In 1978, he founded a real estate firm named American Continental Corporation (ACC), which he acquired Lincoln Savings and Loan Association in 1984. He promised to keep their management team, to not use brokered deposits to expand the size of the savings and loans and to keep Lincoln’s core business residential home loans. Disregarding these promises to the regulatory authorities, Keating broke every promise. In this, he replaced the management team, began taking in larger
The short story of “A Scandal in Bohemia” by Conan Doyle relates to the BBC crime drama series Sherlock episode “A Scandal in Belgravia”. BBC crime drama was filmed based on the short story that Conan Doyle wrote. The film and the text is based on a similar concept, but contains different details of information. There are three comparisons that is easily identified such as theme, characters and setting. These differences make the text and the film different.
The Board of Directors is consisted of 11 members: James M. Elliot, the Chairman of the Board, 3 inside members and 7 outside members. The economy is stable and profitable, but that also means a lot of competition in the market. This poses a great opportunity for the company to grow and gain more of the market share. The only foreseeable real threat that the company will face is new competitors in the market.
Solomon, J (2013). Corporate Governance and Accountability. 4th ed. Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. p.7, p9, p10, p15, p58, p60, p253.