India's Enron or India's Lay?

Interesting times we live in:we've had "India's 9/11","India response to its 9/11","India's Enron","India's Madoff" in the last one month.I just wonder-cant we be original,atleast in naming our tragedies? Swadheshi anyone? All this led me to think-the closest comparison between the events surrounding Satyam in the last 24hrs and Enron was in the protaganists themselves-Kenneth Lay and Ramlinga Raju. I know some people have felt it was unfair to,of all people, Raju.
I'm sure Skilling, as the convicted mastermind of Enron's multibillion-dollar fraud, rode that same tiger, but he never did apologize or admit wrongdoing, even as a federal appeals court this week upheld his conviction. And if the Enron and Satyam fiascos seem similar in scope -- Forrester Research analyst John McCarthy says "there's never been anything close in scale to this fraud in the IT services business" -- they're not entirely similar. For one thing, the Enron and Satyam chiefs come from different stock.


But as some others have pointed out, the similarities are just too startling to ignore.

"Two things strike you when you meet Ramalinga Raju. One, it's difficult to find a more soft-spoken Indian CEO - so soft-spoken that it's often difficult to hear what he says. And two, he opens up only when you ask him about corporate governance issues. The moment you switch to any other topic related to Satyam [Get Quote], the answers are mostly in monosyllables.
I remember one such meeting when Raju bored me to death talking in details about how Satyam believes that better corporate governance enhances business results and helps the company deliver higher value to all its stakeholders. He also referred to the two Golden Peacock awards for excellence in corporate governance that Satyam won and how such awards provide greater encouragement to continue improving the company's corporate governance practices in future."

K.Lay was also known to "bore to death" anyone who would listen about his ethical high ground-check out this link-engrossing reading. Quote below is from another source:

"Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it." This is true. Enron promised its execs they would make money and for a while, they did. McLean reported, "In Enron's energy services division, which managed the energy needs of large companies like Eli Lilly, executives were compensated based on a market valuation formula that relied on internal evidence. As a result, says one former executive, there was pressure to inflate the value of the contracts, even though it had no impact on the actual cash that was generated."
• "Communication: We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people." Enron's communication skills were on display in an Oct. 16 press release that announced a $618 million loss but failed to say that it had written down shareholder equity by $1.2 billion.
• "Excellence: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone." Raise the bar, live behind bars, it's all semantics.

They say you cant teach ethics to a 26-yr old in business school...but atleast you can teach 'em not to write stuff people will snicker about after you are dead and gone!!

More later...about the "Independent board members"...