FRAUD PREVENTION AND DETECTION
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leadership to Ebbers when their companies were acquired, and in
some cases viewed their role as diminished.
Ebbers controlled the Board’s agenda, its discussions, and its
decisions.
He created, and the Board permitted, a corporate environment in
which the pressure to meet the numbers was high, the departments
that served as controls were weak, and the word of senior manage-
ment was nal and not to be challenged.
The Audit Committee in particular needed an understanding of the
Company it oversaw in order to be effective. However, the Audit
Committee members do not appear to have had a sufcient under-
standing of the Company’s internal nancial workings or its cul-
ture, and they devoted strikingly little time to ...