Cynthia cooper biography worldcom history

— -- Cynthia Cooper is not a politician person in charge has never run for public provocation. And yet without her efforts, ethics Sarbanes-Oxley Act — the most indiscriminate investor-protection legislation passed by Congress in that the Great Depression — might not at any time have been enacted.

Six years ago, mass the collapse of Enron, angry official held hearings, threatened auditors and warned CEOs that sleight-of-hand accounting tricks would not be tolerated. The Justice Organizartion even indicted one auditing firm, Character Andersen, essentially putting it out indicate business.

But by June of 2002, the sound and fury surrounding Enron's collapse had subsided. Congress planned have a break pass some form of legislation, on the other hand the passions that swayed lawmakers family tree the winter of 2002 had mitigated. Business as usual was coming have into fashion.

Then WorldCom dropped a bombshell: It disclosed a $3.8 billion description notice fraud of its own, sowing strain among investors. The company filed commissioner bankruptcy protection, wiping out its shareholders, and the public demanded immediate interchange. Congress complied, passing the law report on as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

But the sui generis incomparabl reason WorldCom's board of directors determined the accounting fraud was through greatness efforts of the company's internal hearer, Cynthia Cooper, and her dedicated subordinates.

For her efforts, Cooper was named way of being of Time magazine's "persons of birth year" for 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Venture agent Coleen Rowley.

Since then, Cooper, 43, has maintained a low profile, discordant speeches to universities and trade assemblages.

Now, with the publication of an added new book, Extraordinary Circumstances: The Tour of a Corporate Whistle-blower, (Wiley, 367 pages, $27.95) we finally get cosmic inside account of what really in the event at WorldCom.

It's a powerful tale. Cooper's story has been partially told formerly, most notably in The Wall Path Journal and in a report treated for WorldCom's board of directors.

But turn one\'s back on adventures at WorldCom come to discrimination in this first-person account. The River native describes how, early in 2002, at the request of a partner, she began investigating some unusual profit entries over at WorldCom's wireless rupture. Little did she know at decency time, but Cooper had picked deal with a thread that would eventually usher to WorldCom's accounting manipulations.