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Business
Words in the News
Friday 15 March 2002
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report
then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Arthur Andersen charged
Summary: Arthur Andersen, the accountancy firm at the heart of the Enron scandal, has been charged with obstruction of justice by the United States government. This report from Mark Gregory.
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The
News 
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It's no surprise that Andersen will be subject to criminal proceedings. That became inevitable after the accountancy group failed to voluntarily admit that it had broken the law. But the basis of the indictment is much more serious than expected.
The eight-page document says Andersen's attempt to mask the truth about Enron went far beyond its Houston office, which dealt directly with the energy giant. It's alleged that top executives at Andersen masterminded the destruction of evidence at offices in Portland Oregon, Chicago Illinois and London as well. Tonnes of documents were shredded, but no individual is named in the indictment. If found guilty, the penalty is a fine of up to five hundred thousand dollars.
But the real damage will be to Andersen's reputation. Big name auditing clients have already begun to defect to other companies. That trickle could now become a flood. Andersen has already warned that an indictment would put it in jeopardy. It may go bust.
Mark Gregory, BBC, Washington
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The
Words
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criminal proceedings
legal actions
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indictment
a criminal charge against a person or organisation
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mask
if you mask something you hide it
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top
senior
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shredded
torn into very small pieces
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up to
we use up to to say how large something can be
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Big name
well known
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defect
leave and use the services of other companies
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trickle
if there is a trickle of people or things, they move slowly in small groups or amounts
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go bust
if a company goes bust it loses so much money that it is forced to close down
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