Arthur Andersen had its conviction overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.
Arthur Andersen was one of the Big Five accounting firms before the Enron scandal. The firm audited Enron’s financial statements while also earning substantial fees from consulting and other services. In late 2001, Andersen employees destroyed documents after receiving legal instructions related to the investigation, although the firm said the shredding followed its document-retention policy.
A federal jury convicted Andersen in 2002 of obstruction of justice. The conviction effectively destroyed the firm’s auditing practice: clients left, employees departed, and the company surrendered its licenses to audit public companies in the United States.
In 2005, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction because the trial judge had given the jury an improperly broad instruction about what prosecutors needed to prove. The decision did not declare the document destruction proper; it held that the government had not obtained a valid conviction under the correct legal standard.