In the 1960’s and into the 1970’s I was an auditor for Centel (formerly Central Telephone & Utilities Corp). Centel was purchased by Sprint in 1993, prior to the Sprint Nextel merger.
The non-wireless telephone service was spun-off just last week to form Embarq Corp. Anyway, when I was the Senior Internal Auditor for Centel, the external (independent) audit of Centel was conducted by Arthur Andersen & Co. (later called Andersen).
During the independent audit of Centel, I spent several weeks each year assisting the Andersen auditors doing pbc (prepared by client) work both at the Centel operating headquarters (located in Lincoln, Nebraska at that time) and at Centel regional accounting centers in Las Vegas Nevada, Charlottesville Virginia, Dodge City Kansas and Pueblo Colorado.
At no time did I get the impression that the Andersen Company would have considered the shady practices they were accused of as a result of the Enron debacle.
The Andersen Company operated with impeccable integrity during the time I worked with their auditors.
The gross mismanagement of the Enron audit by the Andersen Company must have gone higher that the manager of the Enron audit because there would have been other managers from the Chicago office also involved in the audit. With a client as large as Enron, at least one partner may have been involved.
Was the bungled Enron audit a result of the same firm doing audit work as well as consulting work for a client? Were there pay-offs to Andersen audit managers to hide the "cooked" Enron books?
In the wake of the Enron scandal and the firm's indictment for obstruction of justice, Andersen ceased auditing clients in 2002 and began selling its overseas assets to other firms.
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