The Arthur Andersen scandal centered on the firm's role as the external auditor for Enron Corporation, which collapsed into bankruptcy in late 2001 due to massive systemic accounting fraud and off-balance-sheet debt concealment. Investigators discovered that Arthur Andersen auditors had systematically shredded thousands of audit documents, destroyed emails, and compromised independence standards to protect lucrative consulting fees. This catastrophic breach of public trust led to a criminal conviction for obstruction of justice, effectively destroying one of the world's "Big Five" accounting firms and permanently altering corporate governance regulations via the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.