Oklahoma state last night filed criminal fraud charges against former WorldCom chief executive Bernie Ebbers and five other top executives of the failed telecom giant.
It is the first time Ebbers has faced charges in the largest fraud in US corporate history, although some other executives have been hit with federal charges in the probe into WorldCom, which has been renamed MCI.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said the charges named Ebbers, former chief financial officer Scott Sullivan, controller David Myers, general accounting director Buford Yates, management accounting chief Betty Vinson and legal accounting director Troy Normand.
The six were each charged with 15 counts of violating the Oklahoma Securities Act.
'We allege the company and these six employees executed a scheme to artificially inflate the value of WorldCom stock and bonds by intentionally falsifying information filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission,' Edmondson said.
Vinson, Normand, Yates and Myers all pleaded guilty to federal charges last year in New York in a deal with prosecutors that could involve cooperation in the probe into Ebbers and Sullivan.
WorldCom collapsed in July 2002 after disclosures of massive accounting fraud, now involving $12 billion.
