2025 GINA Global Strategy for Asthma Management and Prevention Guideline Summary 2025 Update

Top-tier US investment bank Lehman Brothers concealed over $50 billion in loans, masquerading them as sales through accounting trickery. Key executives, including CEO Leland Brendsel, COO David Glenn, and CFO Vaughn Clarke, were found to have been complicit. Consequently, Freddie Mac was slapped with a $125 million fine, and its senior leadership got fired. While Lay died before imprisonment, Skillings received a 24-year prison sentence for his role in this giant fraud.

Background checks on all executives

• ✦ The internal auditor had detected an accounting entry of USD 500 million for computer expenses, without any supporting document.
• The bank held many mortgage-backed securities, which lost value as the housing market declined.
• China Evergrande and Macy’s were among the biggest accounting scandals that surfaced in 2024, a year that saw regulators hand out record penalties for cooking the books.
• In addition to Terraform, the SEC settled several crypto-related securities fraud charges in 2024, such as with Silvergate Capital.

The scandal led to a significant loss of investor confidence and a sharp decline in the company’s stock price. Furthermore, with the Wirecard scandal still fresh in the news, it led to calls for stricter regulations on financial reporting and increased scrutiny of corporate practices in Germany. Brazilian retailer Americanas SA entered bankruptcy in January 2023 with a $4 billion hole in its balance sheet due to manipulation of an obscure financial practice known as reverse factoring.

The Best Ways to Prevent Corporate Accounting Scandals

Before stepping up treatment, confirm that symptoms are due to asthma, and address common problems such as inhaler technique, adherence, allergen exposure and multimorbidity. Symptom control should be assessed from the frequency of daytime and night-time symptoms, awakening at night, and limitation of activity, and for those patients using SABA, frequency of SABA use. The Asthma Control Test can be used to assess recent symptom control, but there are no validated tools for assessing symptom control over a longer period. Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the United States, faced a scandal in 2016 when it was revealed that employees had opened millions of unauthorized accounts for customers to meet aggressive sales targets.

Perkins Elmer Stock Fraud (

This was presented as a significant violation of US securities laws, because it indicated the company was soliciting investments from US-based investors under false pretenses. This accusation was compounded by findings that PwC’s internal control measures were inadequate during their audits. An anonymous letter released in April 2024 highlighted these deficiencies, suggesting that PwC’s auditing practices may have contributed to the crisis at Evergrande.

It is important to distinguish between severe asthma, and asthma that is uncontrolled due to poor inhaler technique/adherence (Box 3). In 2015, Toshiba, a Japanese multinational conglomerate, admitted to overstating its accounting scandals profits by $1.2 billion over several years. The scandal involved accounting irregularities in various divisions of the company, leading to the resignation of several top executives, including the CEO and CFO.

Step down to find the minimum effective treatment

In FY 2024, for example, the SEC conducted five sweeps that led to 38 enforcement actions against public companies and subsidiaries. This represented about 48% of the total enforcement activity against public companies and subsidiaries during the year. Before we begin lamenting the dire state of corporate governance globally, we would hasten to point out that a few big-ticket frauds drove these penalties, rather than an explosion of malfeasance. Bernie Madoff, an American stockbroker, masterminded the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding investors of $64.8 billion. The company had fraudulently categorized expenses as capital costs and recorded fake revenue. Both Kozlowski and Swartz were sentenced to 25 years in prison, and a resulting class-action lawsuit forced Tyco to repay investors $2.92 billion.

In this article, we look at the 10 biggest accounting scandals in recent times. Parmalat, an Italian dairy and food company, collapsed in 2003 after it was discovered that the company had inflated its revenues and assets by billions of dollars. Parmalat’s founder, Calisto Tanzi, was sentenced to prison for his role in the accounting fraud, which involved hiding debts through a complex web of offshore subsidiaries.

Top 10 Accounting Scandals in the Past Decades

The company inflated its revenues through fraudulent accounting practices, including the improper capitalization of expenses. WorldCom’s CEO, Bernard Ebbers, was found guilty of orchestrating the fraud and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. More radical means of accounting reform have been proposed, but so far have very little support. The debate itself overlooks the difficulties of classifying any system of knowledge, including accounting, as rules-based or principles-based.

• Considered one of the biggest multinational insurance firms, AIG was founded in 1919 and operated in more than 130 countries.
• The investigation is being conducted by the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).
• Waste management company reported around $1.7 billion in fake earnings.
• Traditional cases involving public company disclosure and accounting fraud remain the principal regulatory focus around the world, with continued emphasis on revenue recognition.
• However, the company was hiding massive debt and inflating profits through a complex web of off-the-book partnerships and accounting tricks.

This can be done by communicating with the auditor regularly, reviewing the audit results, and taking action to correct any deficiencies. As a federally backed institution, Freddie Mac is required to submit financial statements to the SEC. Interestingly, the company posted the biggest loss of any corporation in history in 2008 ($61.72 billion) and had to be bailed out by the US government.

But despite this, and that many governments and companies have taken steps to improve corporate governance and oversight, history seems to repeat itself. Japanese technology giant Toshiba overstated its profits by $1.2 billion, forcing its CEO to resign. This deception involved recording profits early, delaying losses, and postponing expenses.