Prometheus 6

Home Depot Backdated Many Options
Ex-Software Executive Sentenced in Fraud
Ex-Cendant Executive Ordered Confined at Home
Report Says Oil Royalties Go Unpaid
Fannie Mae to Restate Results by $6.3 Billion Because of Accounting

This is why the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation want to raise the standard for criminal prosecution of corporations...they want you to prove the corporation is criminal "from top to bottom."

And this is whose bidding Senator Specter is doing.

Senator Calls for an Easing of Corporate-Wrongdoing Rules
By LYNNLEY BROWNING

The departing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee proposed legislation yesterday calling for a rollback of the tactics adopted by federal prosecutors to combat corporate wrongdoing after the Enron collapse.

The bill from Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, is the latest challenge to the tactics, which have come under scrutiny from trade groups, former United States attorneys general and a prominent federal judge. Mr. Specter said he would reintroduce the bill next month when Congress convenes.

The Justice Department is now weighing how much to revise the guidelines, which are used as a playbook by prosecutors when conducting investigations of companies and employees. But the white-collar-crime group of an advisory council to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the body that is redrafting the guidelines, is mired in internal debate over how much to scale them back, according to a person close to the matter.

The current guidelines lay out nine factors that prosecutors must consider when weighing whether to indict a company or an individual. The guidelines are intended to encourage companies and people under scrutiny to demonstrate cooperation with investigators by, among other things, disclosing legal secrets, or else face a heightened risk of indictment — a death knell, as it was for the accounting firm Arthur Anderson in 2002.

Despite calling some of the tactics “legitimate tools,” Mr. Specter’s bill calls for “clear and practical limits” to protect the confidentiality of legal communications surrounding companies and employees under investigation.

The current guidelines also encourage companies under investigation to demonstrate cooperation by cutting off legal fees to employees caught up in the inquiries, all in order to avert indictment — something the Specter bill seeks to halt. Mr. Specter, who is a former federal prosecutor, and other critics have said that prosecutors use the tactics as a bludgeon to coerce companies and individuals into giving up their rights.