Also interesting...CHRISTIAN CORPORATE LEADERSIt’s...

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8021266862340067394.post-77881612286689635372008-03-17T20:35:00.000-04:002008-03-17T20:35:00.000-04:00Also interesting...CHRISTIAN CORPORATE LEADERSIt’s...Also interesting... CHRISTIAN CORPORATE LEADERS It’s now more obvious than ever that being moral in narrow conservative terms is no protection from sinning in other ways. Take someone like Bernard Ebbers. As head of WorldCom, Ebbers was known as one of the most religious CEOs in the high-tech sector. He invoked God regularly in speeches and press interviews, and started each board meeting with a prayer. He was a deacon at his Baptist church, where he also led a weekly bible study class. According to those who took the class, he was remarkably fluent in scripture. If someone missed the class, Ebbers would be on the phone to see if they were okay. And yet, Ebbers presided over the largest fraud in U.S. history, a fraud that wrought massive financial pain on present and future retirees across America. After the revelations of this crime, a tearful Ebbers told his congregation: “More than anything else, I hope this doesn’t jeopardize my witness for Jesus Christ.” It sounds as though Ebbers was more concerned with whether public knowledge of his crimes would harm his ability to evangelize his religion than he was with whether his crimes caused actual financial harm to his employees. What a great guy, huh? He may have been a poster boy for traditional sexual and Christian morality, but that didn’t stop him from helping defraud those around him. Or look at John Rigas, who headed Adelphia Communications, one of the largest cable television companies in the United States. The son of Greek immigrants, Rigas was a regular church goer guided by social conservatism. He raised his four children in a small town in upstate New York with a strict set of traditional values. His sons went to work with their father after graduating from the nation’s best colleges and they, too, became pillars of the upstate community where Adelphia was headquartered. The sons, like the father, were social conservatives. No porn channels were alIowed on Adelphia’s cable system. A very different morality guided the Rigases in business. By the time investigators caught on, the Rigases had appropriated hundred of milions of shareholder funds for their personal use through various shady loans and frauds. Prosecutors accused father and sons of “systematically looting” Adelphia... Philip Anschutz is yet another business leader who publicly embraced religion and “family values” while indulging in greed and financial chicanery at the office. A billionaire who is the largest owner of movie screens in America, Anschutz is a religious man who has crusaded against homosexual rights and the medical use of marijuana. He has bankrolled a variety of Christian conservatives and invested in prayer radio. Yet as the founder and chairman of Qwest Communications, a telecommunications firm, Anschutz ranks among the most corrupt insiders of the late 1990s. He sold nearly $2 billion of Qwest stock as it plunged in value from $63 a share to $3. As these sales took place, many in a secretive fashion, Qwest was encouraging its employees to hold on to their own stock and to build their retirement plans around 401(k)s heavy with Qwest shares. Anschutz was later investigated by Eliot Spitzer’s office and eventually agreed to give up $4.4 million in illegal gains from his shady business dealings without admitting any wrongdoing. David Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead ____________________________ ANOTHER CHRISTIAN CORPORATE LEADER The CEO and Chairman of Enron corporation, Dr. Kenneth Lay, was the son of a Baptist minister. He accepted Jesus Christ as his savior when he was 12, and remained passionate about his beliefs: “I’ve always just felt a strong presence in my life, a faith, and the will of God directing my life and giving me guidance for what He’d like to do with my life. There have been too many events in my life where it would be hard to say, ‘That was just coincidence.’ Certain roads were crossed and certain directions became apparent, which at the time--maybe for many people--didn’t look all that apparent. But the results have later turned out to be exactly the right thing at the right time. I can give you any number of examples… Throughout my life, things have fallen into place that turned out to be the right thing to do at the time… Looking back, 30 or 40 years later in some cases, those were the things that just really fit together perfectly… I am convinced that God was--and is--guiding all the way… multiple coincidences, they just seem to occur one after another. Whether it was meeting certain people at certain times, certain jobs appearing suddenly, or certain opportunities appearing… These things just fit in place… I became convinced that my true calling was business… I think, in my case, I’ve been able to make a bigger and more positive impact through business than I could have in any other profession, including the ministry. I’ve been able to impact more lives, more communities, and more causes than I could have otherwise… I begin many of our business dinners, and particularly special ones with directors and senior employees and community leaders, with a prayer. I think that sets the tone as to the importance of faith, at least in my life and sets the tone for the entire meeting. I have a retired minister on staff at Enron who does a lot of counseling for our employees. It’s at their discretion, at their request, but he’s available particularly when employees are going through or experiencing the death of loved ones, or tragic accidents, or maybe depression or whatever. Obviously as he counsels, he also ministers. My employees know that I take basic religious principles very seriously… We have nearly 20,000 employees worldwide and we obviously have a lot of different religious faiths practiced by these employees… We really try to respect everybody’s beliefs. But it’s widely known that I have a very strong Christian background and Christian faith… I basically try to create an environment at Enron where everybody has the opportunity to realize his or her God-given potential. That means that our people are always striving for excellence and to set the standard for our businesses by which others will measure their success…” Lay said in an interview, published in the May/June 2002 issue of The [Wittenburg] Door http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/archives/kennethlay.html On July 7, 2004, Kenneth Lay was indicted by a grand jury on 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges, and was found guilty on May 25, 2006 of 10 counts against him. Legal experts said Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in prison. However, he died about three and a half months before his scheduled sentencing in October. Preliminary autopsy reports state that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. Fortune magazine had named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. However, Enron’s global reputation was undermined by persistent rumours of bribery and political pressure to secure contracts in Central America, South America, Africa, and the Philippines. Especially controversial was its $3 billion contract with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board in India, where it is alleged that Enron officials used political connections within the Clinton and Bush administrations to exert pressure on the board. After a series of scandals involving irregular accounting procedures perpetrated throughout the 1990’s involving Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Enron underwent one of the largest bankruptcies in corporate history, it’s “healthy” financial condition had been sustained mostly by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud.Edward T. Babinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.com