The purpose may be tax avoidance or the cash and assets may be the result of illegal activities such as payoffs to government officials, illegal drug sales and arms trafficking.Backdating can involve assigning an event “to a date prior to that of actual occurrence” or dating a document “to reflect an event that occurred prior to execution.” The propriety of backdating, says law professor Jeffrey L.Backdating allowed executives to choose a past date when the market price was particularly low, thereby inflating the value of the options.The process was illegal in many cases because documents were forged, the options were not properly accounted for, and the backdating was not clearly communicated to the company’s shareholders.
Nejat Seyhun of the University of Michigan for the newspaper showed that that options granting practices between 20 often failed to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement that grants of awards to executives be reported within two days of board approval (T"he Dating Game: Do Managers Designate Option Grant Dates to Increase Their Compensation? Prior research at Erik Lie at the University of Iowa found a pattern of probable options backdating in a number of companies prior to 2002.New rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have reduced the practice to 10% of the companies granting options.Only 7.7% of companies filing within the new two-day reporting window for options grants show a pattern of backdating, compared to 19.9% of companies that did not meet the requirements.It reaches more than 300,000 governance, risk and compliance professionals worldwide every week with research and video-on-demand content in the areas of Compliance Management, Risk Management, Internal Audit, Technology and Governance. Morgan Computer World Sarbanes-Oxley Coverage Bloomberg S-Ox Coverage Sarbanes-Oxley Newsletter (in Spanish) includes links to download prior newsletters and a SOx forum. For current US audit committee rules and the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) SEC Grants One-Year Extension for SOX Compliance - Affects Non-Accelerated Filers Certification of Disclosure in Companies' Quarterly and Annual Reports Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley FAQ from the SEC Assessing the Key Implications of Sarbanes-Oxley from the Business Forum Auditing into an ISO9000 Quality Management System by Dexter Hansen Planning an IT Audit for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance by Michelle Johnston Executing an IT Audit for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance by Michelle Johnston Internal controls and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by Matthew Leitch Integrating Sarbanes-Oxley Act Internal Controls Making Sense of Sarbanes-Oxley Tools by Richard Lanza from Internal Auditor (February 2004) The New Importance of Materiality Journal of Accountancy May 2005 Sarbanes Oxley Assessment Tool (Workbook available to Premium Subscribers) Ten Threats to Compliance Integrating Sarbanes-Oxley Act Internal Controls Auditing into an ISO9000 Quality Management System IT Control Objectives for Sarbanes-Oxley from the IT Governance Institute Management Discussion & Analysis Checklist (GAAP) from BDO Sarbanes-Oxley 404 Network Security (Sep 04) Sarbanes-Oxley Implementation Checklist (Mar 05) Sek Chek for SOX and PCAOB compliance testing of General IS Security Controls.SARBANES-OXLEY SECTION 404: A Guide for Management by Internal Controls Practitioners from the IIA Guidance for Smaller Public Companies Reporting on Internal Control over Financial Reporting Sarbanes-Oxley 404 Implementation Costs - Report from A. A tool for automated host-computer security reviews of non-mainframe platforms, including Unix, Windows, Novell & AS/400.