Introduction The Adelphia Communications scandal occurred in March, 2002 when three of the original founding family members which included the father John Rigas, and two of his sons Michael and Timothy, along with two other company executives were arrested for improperly taking assets from the nation’s sixth-largest cable television company. The scam involved one of the biggest financial frauds faced by a publically held company. In the end stakeholders were forced to absorb massive losses as their shares in stocks fell sharply. The Rigas family hid billions of dollars in debts by falsifying its financial records, and blatantly lying to their investors about it. They recklessly spent millions of dollars of company funds that
For example, we could ask if the conflict, situation or decision would be damaging to others or the community; or ask whether the issue go beyond legal or intuitional concerns; and what impact might there be on their dignity, rights or hopes of others before making certain these decisions. (Barlaup, Hanne & Stuart, 2009).
To decide whether falsifying financial documents is a conflict or not we should ask if this decision could possibly bring harm to anyone? In this case the answer would be yes, the harm would be towards the integrity of company, its employees and the general public. This problem would also hurt investors by causing massive financial losses. The next questions we ask is whether or not this issue goes beyond any legal concerns or not? Could choosing to conceal debts and faking receipts cause legal problems? In this case it is called fraud and is against the law. They deceived the public and this was not an ethical thing and according to deontological theory this clearly would be labeled as an immoral action and should never be done. Looting company funds by applying the deontological framework of business ethics to the problem of how the family used company money and property to support their excessive lavish lifestyles, we ask the following ethical questions. First would we thing that using the company’s private jets and other company owned property for personal use to ever be considered right? What about spending $12.8 million dollars of