Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Wal-Mart Former Vice Chairman Coughlin Admits Fraud

Thomas M. Coughlin, a former second- ranking executive at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company.

The former Wal-Mart vice chairman entered pleas today before U.S. District Judge Robert T. Dawson in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

``Today I accepted responsibility for serious personal mistakes in judgment,'' Coughlin said in a statement distributed by his lawyer, Blair G. Brown of Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington. ``I regret the embarrassment this matter has caused my family and friends, and I thank them for their support, love and friendship.''

Wal-Mart Former Vice Chairman Coughlin Admits Fraud

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Enron Never Infested with Fraud

JAN. 31 4:19 P.M. ET Lawyers for former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling insisted Tuesday the men were guilty of no crimes, arguing the company was never infested with fraud and instead fell victim to a sudden crisis of market confidence.

Lay and Skilling were pioneers in the energy trading industry who deeply loved their company -- which stands to this day, Lay lawyer Michael Ramsey said, as "one of the finest free-market institutions the world has ever seen."

Enron Never Infested with Fraud

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Congress needs its own version of Sarbanes-Oxley

HAVING served in Washington for eight years, I can't say that the current scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff and various members of Congress comes as any great surprise.

During my tenure as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, I worked with many decent, well-intentioned representatives and senators. Yet on issue after issue, it was clear that the interlocking systems of campaign finance, lobbying and policy-making were breaking down. Because many of the issues before the SEC were far from the front of the public's mind, the influence of high-priced lobbyists on the system was easy to detect and especially brazen.

Congress needs its own version of Sarbanes-Oxley

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Taking an accounting of reform

Anger, haste and politics hardly seem like a formula for successful laws, yet most agree those were key ingredients in the 2002 corporate reform law known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Public outrage over the collapse of Enron and WorldCom and the ensuing damage to shareholders and employees led to the legislation, seen widely as the largest change in U.S. business law since the 1930s.

Taking an accounting of reform

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Thursday, January 26, 2006

Sarbanes-Oxley Risks Associated with Linux

Many companies using Linux for embedded applications may be unwittingly violating the Linux license and even breaking federal securities laws, according to a white paper released by Wasabi Systems, an embedded operating systems provider. The white paper, When GPL Violations are Sarbanes-Oxley violations, is the first in a series of legal studies analyzing the common misperceptions and risks associated with Linux and its license, the GNU general public license (GPL). Future white papers will look at the GPL implications of loadable kernel modules (LKM) and how upstream GPL violations impact VARs and end users.

"Linux is a powerful operating system," says Jay Michaelson, an author of the white paper and Wasabi Systems' General Counsel. "But if companies violate the license, the consequences can be more severe than they think." He notes that Wasabi uses open source software in its products, including very careful use of software governed by the GPL.

Sarbanes-Oxley Risks Associated with Linux

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

Sarbanes-Oxley Patron Beller Quits SEC - Forbes.com

As director of the Corporation Finance division, which reviews financial reports and public offerings filed by the more than 12,000 public companies in the U.S., Beller oversaw the rule-making that implemented the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002--colloquially called "Sarbox," the bundle of regulations came to be in the wake of the accounting scandals at Enron (otc: ECSPQ), Tyco International (nyse: TYC) and WorldCom (reborn as MCI, which then merged with Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ).

Sarbanes-Oxley Patron Beller Quits SEC - Forbes.com

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Saturday, January 07, 2006

Whitepaper: Adding Value to Sarbanes-Oxley Efforts

Companies are poised to leverage Sarbanes-Oxley related experience, documentation, methodologies and analysis into high value add operational advancements.
Percipio Consulting Group has prepared a white paper addressing this issue. The paper discusses an approach to utilizing the investment made in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for creating operational value through leveraging existing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work today.

Abstract
Compliance efforts related to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 have resulted in a full spectrum of operational opportunities and assets. Assets include the end product deliverables as well as the process and knowledge base created. Culture, process, knowledge capital and technology have all been impacted by Sarbanes-Oxley and will continue to change as the project based effort transitions into an ongoing process based effort.

To take full advantage of the opportunities Sarbanes-Oxley provides for adding value operationally, it will require a paradigm shift in the way Finance, Compliance and Operations view the compliance effort. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance should no longer be viewed as an expense but rather an investment in enterprise improvement.

Operationalizing Sarbanes-Oxley: How to Leverage Sarbanes-Oxley to Add Value to Business Operations

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