Former U.S. Rep. Michael G. Oxley, co-author of the landmark Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, died January 1, 2016, at age 71. Oxley represented Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District for 25 years, and served as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2001 through 2006.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (or “SOX”) was enacted July 30, 2002, in response to a series of massive accounting scandals involving public companies such as Enron and Worldcom. Among other things, SOX required corporations’ annual financial reports to include an Internal Control Report; made it a crime for any person to corruptly alter, destroy, etc. documents with the intent to impair the document’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; created significant criminal penalties for certifying a misleading or fraudulent financial report; created the PCAOB; created the SEC’s Fair Funds process; and much more.
