That was accomplished, the charges said, through means including fraudulent valuations, misuse of off-the-books partnerships, improper corporate reorganizations and intentional mistreatment of accounting reserves.
He also faced questions about whether Harken -- of which he was a director and a member of the audit committee -- had deliberately booked an improper profit on the sale of a subsidiary in 1989 to obscure the size of its operating losses.
That was accomplished, according to the indictment, by manipulating expenses, revenue, debt levels, cash flow and asset values through a variety of means, including fraudulent valuations, misuse of off-the-books partnerships, improper corporate reorganizations and intentional mistreatment of accounting reserves.
The March-April issue of NYSE, the New York Stock Exchange magazine, opens with an ad for the American International Group, which said last week that improper accounting had inflated its book value by $1.7 billion.
The pair voted in the Jackson suburb of Madison, where McDaniel's camp maintains that improper writing in the poll book, in which voter records are kept, effectively invalidated dozens of votes.
Enron, an energy trader, filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001 after restating $586 million in revenue because of improper accounting tied to off-book partnerships.
Depending on the nature of the evidence, such allegations would go far in advancing the government's theory that Enron engaged in improper transactions with off-the-books partnerships to improve its apparent financial results.
Sherron Watkins, an executive who had just sent an anonymous letter to Mr. Lay criticizing some of the off-books entities as improper, came forward to meet with him.
Lawmakers heard sharply conflicting testimony today from Enron's former chief executive, Jeffrey K. Skilling, who portrayed himself as ignorant of the company's questionable practices, and other executives who said Mr. Skilling received numerous and specific warnings that Enron's off-the-books partnerships were improper.
Yet well before Grose there was a market for books that anatomised the improper diction of the streets.
