Suchergebnisse

• eBook-Kapitel aus dem Buch Accounting Fraud

  Case 28: EM.TV (Germany, 2000)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …wealthy. He was an indifferent student, but during high school in a small town near Munich, he already made money by selling motorcycles and used cars on… …wanted to be on his own, and started EM.TV with an office, a car phone, and not much else. “I didn’t know if I could pay the rent,” he later recalled… …expected a rising demand for their programs. And EM.TV sales grew at an explosive rate when Haffa spun deal after deal with the most famous players in the… …early 2000, shortly after a capital increase, EM.TV started an acquisition spree. For example, in February 2000, it acquired the Jim Henson Company… …executed verbal contract”. On April 8, 2003, the brothers were both found guilty. Prosecutors were not suc- cessful in their attempt for an eight month…

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  Case 29: Infomatec (Germany, 2000)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …Accounting Fraud in European Companies 177 Case 29: Infomatec (Germany, 2000) Infomatec, an Augsburg-based maker of interactive TV… …fictitious large-scale orders. For example, in May 1999, at the peak of the new-economy bubble, Infomatec published an ad-hoc-disclosure, announcing the… …ad-hoc-disclosures are by no means intended only for an investment and sector-specialized audience, but rather for all present or potential investors and… …a competitor and simply garnished with an Infomatec logo. Finally, the company’s core software product allegedly never possessed many of the… …characteristics and functionalities professed in the prospectus and corporate literature. In September 2000, the district attorney’s office began an official… …of an important development. For the first time in Germany, the board members of a cor- poration were held personally liable for supplying…

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  Case 30: Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (Belgium, 2000)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …. Besides, Pol Hauspie (a former tax accountant) had set up an intricate holding-company structure, and the com- plexity fed suspicion about L&H. Then… …co-founders, resigned as co- chairmen, and trading of L&H stock was suspended. On November 29, 2000, the company filed for bankruptcy protection after an… …1996, Dictation (which L&H dis- closed in its filings to be a related party) entered into an agreement with L&H to license certain speech-to-text… …, they didn’t burden L&H’s bottom line. The agreement eventually gave L&H an option to buy back the rights to the license and any software developed… …of fraud. The revelations eventually led to an investigation by the American watchdog SEC. The Flanders Language Valley Fund N.V. Over the… …BND espionage scandal What first seemed to be an “ordinary” story about creative accounting, finally turned into a European espionage scandal, with… …Christoph Kionowski). Bodenkamp was also an agent of the German intelligence service BND and had created a network to build a secret bridge between police… …sloppy bookkeeping of some LDCs and investigative journalism of De Stan- daard put an end to the secret connection. The eventual result of the… …fraudulent conduct was the destruction of L&H as an operating company and a financial loss, borne by investors in Belgium, the U.S. and elsewhere, of at… …investors and the auditors”. In 2004, KPMG paid USD 115 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit stemming from the collapse of L&H. An L&H insider later…

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  Case 31: Bankgesellschaft Berlin (Germany, 2001)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …an opaque network of ties between politicians, bankers and company execu- tives in Berlin. Rarely has the close intertwining of business and politics… …. While Berlin’s city-state government owned the majority of BGB’s shares, the new institution was also publicly listed. That made it an unusual hybrid in… …purchaser – an offshore invest- ment vehicle called “Immobilien und Beteiligungen AG” (IBAG), ostensibly based in the Cayman Islands – stood BGB itself. The… …deal was stopped by BaFin, Ger- many’s Federal Banking Supervisory Office. Criminal proceedings were launched against 23 leading BGB officials. An…

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  Case 32: Comroad (Germany, 2002)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …accusations took place on January 15, 2002 with an article on www.boerse-online.de, challenging the veracity of Com- road’s revenue growth: “Comroad will soon… …latest, he will also have to present annual financial statements certi- fied by an auditor. Boerse-Online fears that he will come across with something… …at all to query. On the contrary: in the years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000, Comroad has al- ways received an unqualified audit certificate. So we… …American-style revolts at their annual meetings to block the rehiring of KPMG. The audit firm suffered an increase in the number of clients that switched away to… …KPMG just isn’t there any more,” said Reinhild Keitel, a director at the Protective Association of Small Shareholders, an investor advocacy group. But… …thought that the “we were fooled, too” defense could be valid. “Comroad is not an account- ing issue. This is fraud,” said Hans-Georg Bruns, a member of…

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  Case 33: Vivendi Universal (France, 2002)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …his ouster by Vivendi’s board, Messier had issued several press releases that falsely stated that Vivendi did not face an immediate cash shortage. It… …October 2002, the French public prosecutor opened an investigation against “X”, or persons unknown, for the publication of false balance sheets and false… …negotiated before resigning in July 2002. In addition, Messier was prohibited from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. The… …of an exceedingly ambitious CEO. However, it is also the story of a profound conflict in French and American styles of business. Vivendi was an…

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  Case 34: Royal Ahold (The Netherlands, 2003)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …rocked Ahold, and many critics insisted that the Dutch royal fam- ily rescind the company’s “Royal” designation. “This is pretty big,” said an analyst in… …rigorous performance standards that were imposed on Ahold’s domestic operations. During the 1990s, CEO Cees van der Hoeven had established an overall… …figures shocked Ahold’s new management as much as it did analysts and investors. The company immediately authorized an investigation by law firm White &… …(like many others) did not have a systematic method of accounting for these allowances. The absence of proper internal controls provided an excellent… …at the end of an accounting period). USF executives also provided Ahold’s independent auditors with false and mis- leading information by, for… …confirmations is an important part of the audit process, and the Commission will hold accountable those who work to subvert it.” The USF case was the largest… …USF was “very opaque”. An SEC spokesperson commented: “These auditors had evidence in their hands that could have stopped the fraud in its tracks… …testimony. But Ahold also conducted an extensive internal investigation and even expanded it beyond the fraud at U.S. Foodservice and the improper joint… …venture accounting. The company voluntarily analyzed accounting practices and internal controls at 17 operating units. An SEC enforcement official said… …: “This case is an example of the clear corporate advantage to conducting a comprehensive internal investigation and fully cooperating with the…

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  Case 35: Parmalat (Italy, 2003)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …“Coca-Cola of milk”. In 1990, Parmalat was listed on the Milan stock exchange – and Tanzi built it into an Italian powerhouse with operations in some… …known that it could not access about EUR 500 million in supposedly liquid funds held in an obscure Cayman Islands-registered investment fund called… …special purpose entities, also based in offshore havens, to which the liabilities were transferred. An independent auditor later found that the company… …. Grant Thornton issued an auditors’ report on Bonlat’s 2002 financial statements, purportedly relying on the bank confirmation from Bank of America… …displaying the Bank of America letterhead, had cut and pasted a signature on the document, and copied and faxed the confirmation in an effort to authenticate… …, in which Parmalat supposedly had about EUR 500 million. They say this placed an onus on Deloitte – as principal auditor for the group’s consolidated… …Accounting Fraud in European Companies 211 – A British pension fund manager claimed that he had asked for an investiga- tion into Parmalat’s accounts a… …partner in the Buenos Aires office of Deloitte filed an internal “early warning report” expressing serious concerns about Parmalat’s Latin American… …, it was once again Italy’s biggest market-listed food group. Calisto Tanzi is a broken man today. Until Parmalat collapsed, Tanzi was an almost…

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  Case 37: Siemens (Germany, 2006)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …faced steep fines unless it cooperated, Siemens hired international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton to work with federal investigators and to conduct an… …International and an internationally recognized anti-corruption expert) as compliance advisor. “Siemens tolerates absolutely no illegal conduct by employees –… …Alexander Bassen said that Pierer probably would not carry out the internal investigation in an appropriate way, because, as former CEO, he might have… …, like Nigeria, but also in countries with reputations for transparency, like Norway. Inside Siemens, bribes were referred to as “NA” – an abbreviation… …black money to foreign officials. However, the most common method of bribery involved hiring an outside “con- sultant” to help “win” a contract. Siemens… …one observer. An insider’s account of corruption at Siemens was provided by Reinhard Siekac- zek, a former sales manager at the telecommunications… …, he oversaw an annual bribery budget of USD 40 million to USD 50 million at the “Com” division. For Greece alone, he budgeted about USD 10 million a… …counts to bribe government officials who awarded Siemens major contracts prior to the 2004 Olympic Games. These contracts included an order for a security… …system as well as an order for the out-dated Athens subway system. In another case, “Com” sales staff paid USD 5 million in bribes to the son of the… …million in bribes to executives at Italy’s Enel S.p.A., in order to secure gas-turbine contracts. Furthermore, prosecutors conducted an investigation…

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  Case 38: Daewoo Group (South Korea, 1999)

  Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann, Dr. Stefan Hofmann

  …failures that later plagued many leading companies around the world. However, Daewoo’s warnings signs were dismissed as an aberration limited to a distant… …business-government partnership that lifted South Korea from poverty to an industrial power, the gov- ernment ensured that Kim got almost as much credit as he wished… …would sell an asset far above current value to an affiliated entity, and book the capital gain as profit. Government lawyers said the assets were actu-… …documents to create an import transaction that never occurred. According to the prosecutors, the group diverted an additional USD 1.5 billion to the BFC… …for personal enrichment by Kim and senior Daewoo managers. Accounting Fraud in Asian Companies 229 Daewoo was not an isolated incident; a… …manner in which it was conducted and the way in which it lasted undetected until the end. An economic adviser to President Kim Dae Jung said much of what… …Korea after six years as an international fugitive. He had lived like a criminal on the run, allegedly dividing his time between Asia and Europe, but… …approximately USD 20 billion in Daewoo funds, Kim claimed that the BFC was “an official organization to manage financial resources abroad more efficiently.”… …a “locomotive” for South Korea’s economic growth. He said Kim’s legen- dary “diligence and passion” had set an example for millions of South Koreans… …. The court’s penalty seemed to reflect an emerging hard line among Korean judges, who had often been accused of being too lenient on business executives…

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