The penalty did not fit the crime in the case of Arthur Andersen, according to the former Republican congressman Michael Oxley, one of the two main architects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 (SOX).
Speaking to the IAB sister title The Accountant more than a decade after SOX and Arthur Andersen in an exclusive interview, Oxley said that "without a doubt the death penalty for Arthur Andersen was the worst mistake".
"It was a political decision made by the Bush administration without really thinking it through. They could have restructured the partnership to make it work better and more openly," he said.
" But what it did was to eliminate a major competitor in the field, which meant that by definition of supply and demand, the cost of accounting services was bound to go up."
Oxley said many blamed the increase in cost of compliance and services on SOX, "but a lot had also to do with the fact that you went from a Big Five market to Big Four by the stroke of a pen by the Justice Department.
"The Justice Department brought criminal action against Arthur Andersen and that was the end of the firm, they folded about a week later."
That was a "death penalty" he said for which partners around the country, who had nothing to do with the scandal, ended up on the street for.
Arthur Andersen collapsed in 2002 following criticism of its work as Enron auditor and after being convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to its audit of Enron.
Read the full interview with Michael Oxley and some of the untold truth about SOX