The guy who discovered Bernie Madoff's scam says GE is about to go bankrupt / Boing Boing

Long before the collapse of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme – the most important in the history of the world! – The accounting investigator Harry Markopolos had publicly accused Madoff of being a scam; he now says that General Electric is "in a recession of bankruptcy", with a "tattered toll".

Markopolos and his team have just published a 175-page report called GENERAL ELECTRIC, A MORE IMPORTANT FRAUD IN ENRON, accusing the company of using accounting tricks to reduce the $ 40 billion liability and hide the problems related to his involvement in the oil services company Baker Hughes.

GE does not dispute having a $ 71 billion asset and a $ 106 billion debt, but says "expect significant progress" by reducing its debt next year.

GE accuses the Markopolos of accumulating misrepresentations in order to benefit short sellers, who earn money when GE's stock price drops. Markopolos's research was funded by short sellers, but he claims that his research was motivated by his aversion to fraud, not by the interests of his backers.

Markopolos also rejected GE's claims that it would benefit from the company's stock price drop as it works with a company that is downsizing GE's shares – betting that the price will go down in order to pull profit from the decline.
He would not name the investment company, simply saying that he was a "seeker of the truth".
"If I see an accounting fraud, I pursue it," he said.

Markopolos added that he had "ongoing discussions" with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice about their GE accounting investigations.
GE said in regulatory filings and during results teleconferences with analysts cooperating with both the SEC and the GM. The SEC declined to comment on the condition of its GE probe. The GM was not immediately available for comment.

GENERAL ELECTRIC, GREATER FRAUD ENRON [Harry Markopolos/Fraud Investigators]

Madoff's whistleblower said GE was "a year away from the Chapter 11 recession" [Paul R. La Monica/CNN Business]

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