When he was performing his job, Kim Emigh found out weird the relationship there was between the vendor of hardware and some executives of Worldcom. Some very expensive bills made him feel there was a problem with these deals, just like someone would receive a kickback from these operations. When one of his superior came to see him, and gave him 10 statements of work with missing social security number, or some with the social number use couple time, or already listed in the company, Emigh decided to talk to his boss to let them know this situation.
He blew the whistle a first time, and changes his position in the company to avoid being in contact with in former boss. The fact is the company was not doing well, the forecast of the market where higher than what is the realty. So, instead of being the bills on time, the supplier had to wait a longer period than usual. After his first attempt to get some answers from his superior, he received, couple year later, a mail asking the accountant of the company to change the entry in the book of some items.
The mail was asking the accountant to violate on of the accounting principle. Instead of charging some capital project as a capital cost, the accountants were asking to book these cost as an expense for the company. To make it simpler and explain what the consequences of this violation are, a capital project is an asset to the company, and turn them into an expanse will have some effects on the profits of the company. The purpose of this misclassification in the accounting book is to lead of a decrease of the profit in order to pay fewer taxes. This is considering as a fraud by the SEC, because the company knows what they were asking; make a fake statement to reduce the taxes, and also it causes damage to the investors who use these statements to make their investment decision. Blowing the whistle make Emigh to get fired. He finally lost his job because he respected his ethics values and did a proper and well done job. Emigh said in this article that he has “a responsibility to the shareholder and (him) self”. This sentence explains what the issue is. When you are performing your job at this kind of position your actions have large consequences. Not only for the company, but also for you and other people that trust your job to make important decisions. What Emigh did was to defend the common interest instead of protecting his personal interest (career, life, etc…)
The courage of Kim Emigh has to be unlighted, because he chose to follow his ethics values even if he knows he could lost his job, but he could also lost the way of life he has. When he lost his job, he lost his financial security, the stability he was able to provide to his family, the future he had worked on and planned for them.
In this case he really stood for a principle and made a difference. Thanks to his work, his honesty and his courage he helps to change the situation because an audit group find the fraud and we can guess that this group is willing to change the situation and fix the problem.
