OKLAHOMA CITY, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Oklahoma's attorney general filed criminal charges against MCI, its former chief executive and five others Wednesday over an $11 billion accounting fraud.
The state charges that MCI, formerly WorldCom Inc., and several of its former executives including Chief Executive Officer Bernard Ebbers violated the Oklahoma Securities Act.
The state said it will prove WorldCom, Ebbers and others willfully presented investors falsified information about the company on which it offered the sale of its stock, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Other states may follow suit but it's unclear what effect a state's criminal indictment, or potential conviction, would have on MCI's emergence from bankruptcy.
Federal prosecutors had decided not to sue the company because of the effect on creditors, 50,000 employees and 20 million individual and thousands of business customers, including the federal government, the Journal said.
