Part 11/13:
Jeffrey Skilling’s tenure at Enron is synonymous with corporate fraud. Under his leadership, the company engaged in elaborate accounting tricks—using special purpose entities to hide debt and inflate earnings. When these practices were uncovered in 2001, Enron’s stock collapsed, prices plummeted, and thousands of employees lost their retirement savings.
Skilling served more than a decade in prison for his role in the scandal, which profoundly reshaped regulations governing corporate accounting and governance. His story remains a stark warning of how greed and dishonesty can destabilize entire industries.