Top US corporate officials "get paid the big bucks" and should be held accountable for knowing what's happening inside their companies, said Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who is working on ways to improve corporate disclosure after the Enron collapse.
O'Neill, part of a presidential panel involved in the matter, said a chief executive officer occupies the top spot in a corporation and with that goes the highest level of accountability.
"For me, the place to start as we examine the question of what ought to be done is to tighten the idea of what it means to be responsible," O'Neill said in remarks Thursday before the Chamber of Commerce.
"My notion is that we should say to CEOs -- you know -- and if you don't, you should. If you get paid the big bucks, you should know," O'Neill said. "It's not OK to say I wasn't trained in this or I wasn't trained in that or I relied on somebody else. Responsibility and accountability at the end of the day means no excuses."
O'Neill's comments come after Enron's ex-chief executive officer, Jeffrey Skilling, testified to Congress that he didn't know the details of partnership transactions by the bankrupt company. The complex partnerships and questionable transactions eventually brought down the company and were used to hide its huge debts.
Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay -- the company's chief executive officer until about a year ago -- has told internal company investigators that he believed the transactions were appropriate because they were approved by Enron's auditors, Arthur Andersen LLP.
When early disclosures about Enron's collapse were first coming out in January, O'Neill said, "Companies come and go. It's ... part of the genius of capitalism."
He said then he never considered intervening in Enron's spiral toward bankruptcy and didn't inform President George W. Bush of the falling giant's request for help.
The presidential panelUS Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
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