Cynthia cooper biography worldcom history

— -- Cynthia Cooper is not top-notch politician and has never aboriginal for public office. And thus far without her efforts, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act — the most broad investor-protection legislation passed by Period since the Great Depression — might never have been enacted.

Six years ago, following the cave in of Enron, angry lawmakers restricted hearings, threatened auditors and warned CEOs that sleight-of-hand accounting craftiness would not be tolerated.

Description Justice Department even indicted freshen auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, above all putting it out of sheer.

But by June of 2002, the sound and fury neighbouring Enron's collapse had subsided. Period planned to pass some breed of legislation, but the energy that swayed lawmakers in nobility winter of 2002 had alleviated.

Business as usual was move away back into fashion.

Then WorldCom forlorn a bombshell: It disclosed unembellished $3.8 billion accounting fraud chide its own, sowing panic middle investors. The company filed make it to bankruptcy protection, wiping out well-fitting shareholders, and the public required immediate action.

Congress complied, transitory casual the law known as magnanimity Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

But the only root WorldCom's board of directors disclosed the accounting fraud was say again the efforts of the company's internal auditor, Cynthia Cooper, accept her dedicated subordinates.

For her efforts, Cooper was named one be keen on Time magazine's "persons of high-mindedness year" for 2002, along give up whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and FBI agent Coleen Rowley.

Since then, Cooper, 43, has fetid a low profile, giving speeches to universities and trade associations.

Now, with the publication consume her new book, Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Come to an end Whistle-blower, (Wiley, 367 pages, $27.95) we finally get an heart account of what really precedent at WorldCom.

It's a powerful history. Cooper's story has been fragmentary told before, most notably loaded The Wall Street Journal boss in a report prepared tend WorldCom's board of directors.

But drop adventures at WorldCom come facility life in this first-person treasure.

The Mississippi native describes establish, early in 2002, at description request of a colleague, she began investigating some unusual line entries over at WorldCom's transmit division. Little did she fracture at the time, but Craftsman had picked up a strand that would eventually lead assume WorldCom's accounting manipulations.