Patrick Oki, who stepped aside as PKF Hawaii's managing partner on Wednesday, pleaded not guilty yesterday to stealing $500k from his firm. Charges include theft, money laundering forgery and whole bunch of other bad stuff.
Despite all that, PKF Hawaii has his back:
KHON2 spoke with Reg Baker, who’s now in charge with two other partners. He says the accusations are a personal matter between Oki and four former partners who turned him in. Baker also believes Oki will be back managing the company.
Just in case things don't quite turn out that way, Baker says, "we’ll explore options with communicating with PKF North America."
Why, you may ask, would a firm continue to support a guy who's been accused of ripping them off for half a million clams?
“Of course, you know, whenever you’ve got a falling out of partners, there’s probably some emotions involved,” Baker said. “I believe that it will all come out in court. I believe that Pat is a good person and he will make sure that the truth is told.” Baker said Oki and the four former partners had been negotiating a settlement so Baker was just as shocked as everybody else at PKF when Oki was arrested.
Okay, then. Some bad blood between partners escalated into a criminal matter. Cooler heads can't always prevail.
[KHON2]
“[R]eally, when you get down to it, the guys at Enron never would have done this. This is so blatant, so extreme,” Gates said of state governments’ accounting practices generally. “Is anyone paying attention to some of the things these guys do? They borrow money — they’re not supposed to, but they figure out a way — they make you pay more in withholding to help their cashflow out, they sell off the assets, they defer the payments, they sell off the revenues from tobacco.” [