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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Contents Overview 3 Enron 3 Sarbanes-Oxley Act 3 11 Titles 4 Major Sections of SOX 5 Section 302 5 Section 404 6 Section 409 6 Section 902 7 Section 906 7 After SOX: What has Sarbanes-Oxley Accomplished & Issues that Remain 7 Conclusion 8

Overview
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law in 2002 by President Bush. Sarbanes- Oxley came to be because of corporate level accounting scandals that had then, recently occurred. The most common of these scandals include: Adelphia, Enron, Peregrine Systems, Tyco and, WorldCom. This act “introduced major changes to the regulation of financial practice and corporate governance.”
Enron
The Enron Scandal is one of many that prompted the obvious …show more content…
The intent of the fraudster here would be to “impair the objects integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.”
Section 906 Section 906 also falls under the white collar crime category and specifically, the penalties that will be endured to any person that certifies a misleading or fraudulent financial report. In this section, it is stated that penalties can be up to $5 million and 20 years in prison. I believe this section is put in to make it clear that CEO’s are going to be held responsible for “signing off” so, it is in their best interest to thoroughly look over statements and reports.

After SOX: What has Sarbanes-Oxley Accomplished & Issues that …show more content…
I discussed the titles that comprise SOX and further went into detail on the most important sections. I am not a critic of this act. I think as far as restoring public perception goes, Sarbanes-Oxley was extremely successful. Also, I think this legislation changed the views of the CEO’s. CEO’s were now explicitly aware of their accountability when it came to reporting. This was an extremely beneficial change as, CEO’s use to have the ability to claim ignorance and push the consequences down the corporate ladder. I am sure that if Congress would have taken more time when passing this legislation, it could have been improved upon, but, desperate times… the corporate world needed a drastic change to restore faith and help the economy. There is undoubtedly still fraud occurring and therefore this battle to end it will go
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