The Guiltiest Guys In the Room

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted May 26, 2006.

The Enron verdict is a heartening chapter, but it provides the beginning, rather than an end of reckoning with a culture of blame-dodging that bleeds far beyond Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.

After enduring four months of testy and often sensational testimony, jurors finally reached a verdict yesterday in the case against former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and founder Ken Lay. Found guilty of both fraud and conspiracy, Skilling and Lay each face a minimum of 25 years in prison.

Sift through the headlines on the Enron verdict, and you're likely to be left with the sense that the American public has emerged victorious, in the process establishing a zero-tolerance policy of fraud in business. While the verdict will certainly serve as a cautionary tale to future corporate leaders, it would be misleading to assume that the chapter on the culture of corporate corruption has been closed.