Enron Corp. CEO Kenneth Lay announced on Thursday that it has fired Arthur Andersen as its auditor.
Lay said the action was prompted by the revelation that Andersen staffers destroyed documents.
"While we had been willing to give Andersen the benefit of the doubt until the completion of that investigation, we cannot afford to wait any longer in light of recent events, including the reported destruction of documents by Andersen personnel and the disciplinary actions taken against several of Andersen's partners working in its Houston office," he said in a statement.
Enron's action came as congressional investigators pressed the accounting firm for more documents concerning Enron's business activities.
A memo from Arthur Andersen showed that Enron Corp.'s auditor knew about the energy company's murky financial transactions long before it's collapse, congressional investigators revealed on Thursday.
Andersen on Thursday confirmed the memo dated February 6 last year that recounted a meeting of its executives. They discussed the amount of debt kept off Enron's books and considered dropping the energy giant as a client.
Andersen has become deeply embroiled in the Enron bankruptcy scandal following disclosures that its employees destroyed thousands of Enron-related documents in recent months.
Enron, the 7th largest company in the US, filed for bankruptcy protection on December 2, the biggest bankruptcy in the US history.
(Xinhua News Agency January 18, 2002)
