WorldCom's cowboy bites the dust

摘要

"He was the man who was in charge. It's just kind of hard to sit there and think he didn't know what was going on." So said Vincent Wright, a bus driver from Manhattan who sat on the jury trying Ber-nie Ebbers. On March 15th it was that sense of disbelief which, after eight days of deliberation, led the jury to find the former boss of WorldCom guilty of fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regu-lators in relation to the $11 billion account- ing fraud that brought the telecoms giant crashing down in America's biggest-ever bankruptcy. Mr Ebbers, who in his pomp during the telecoms boom sported cow-boy boots and a ten-gallon hat, is now fac-ing the real possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars.