The Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by former WorldCom Inc. Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers, who was convicted of orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud that led to the largest US bankruptcy.
Ebbers was convicted by a federal jury in 2005 in New York on nine counts of conspiracy, securities fraud and other crimes that led to the telephone company's bankruptcy in July of 2002. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In appealing to the high court, attorneys for Ebbers argued that the trial judge should have required the government to grant immunity to several prospective defence witnesses. They also argued the trial judge wrongly instructed the jury that it could convict Ebbers on the basis that he engaged in "conscious avoidance" of the fraud at WorldCom.
A US appeals court in New York last year rejected the same arguments by his attorneys and upheld Ebbers' conviction. Without any comment or recorded dissent, the Supreme Court justices denied the appeal. The US Justice Department, which brought the case against Ebbers after a series of high-profile corporate scandals in 2001 and 2002, opposed the appeal.
Department lawyers said the appeals court ruling was correct and that further Supreme Court review was not warranted of the defence witness immunity and the jury instruction issues. Ebbers transformed WorldCom into a telecommunications powerhouse through a string of take-overs. WorldCom emerged from bankruptcy as MCI Inc, which was later acquired by Verizon Communications Inc.
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