Andersen's not getting away with a fine and a slap on the wrist this time.

See:
Andersen Misread Depths of the Government's Anger,
by Kurt Eichenwald for the New York Times.

Last week, Andersen became the first major accounting firm ever charged with a felony. The firm, and its lawyers, misread the depths of the government's anger with Andersen in the wake of its flawed audits of other major clients. Earnings restatements by those clients have caused their stock prices to tumble, costing investors tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

In such cases, Andersen paid a fine and moved on. This time, law enforcement officials wanted to crack down hard.

The prosecutors' zeal for going after Enron appears to be almost matched by their fury at Andersen. In their view, Andersen has minimized the significance of its transgressions — including one from another case that left the firm under an injunction against future misdeeds at the very time the Enron documents were destroyed.

"Obviously," said one person involved in the case, "the question finally came down to, `How many times do investors have to lose millions of dollars because they relied on Andersen before somebody finally charges them with a crime?'... "

...Andersen saw the case as limited to the Enron document destruction, with its past conduct not at issue. It considered the evidence weak and the prosecutors' interpretation of the law wrong. Faced with the prospect that a guilty plea would put it out of business, the firm chose a criminal trial, the first major corporation to do so in recent years.

Andersen has seen the case transformed from a business problem to a crisis of historic proportions. The government now faces an angry corporate adversary rumbling with demands for a rapid trial, which could hinder the prosecutors' ability to develop essential evidence.

The standoff with Andersen followed months of behind-the-scenes battles and decisions that inexorably set both sides on the path toward an all-out legal war.