William F. Johnson, an assistant United States attorney, said on Wednesday WorldCom’s former chief executive was involved in corruption and ordered top managers to commit fraud that led to incredible losses for the shareholders.

Mr. Johnson said that money, power and pressure can corrupt people and all the three factors made Ebbers commit fraud on a billion-dollar scale.

Earlier this week, Mr. Ebbers’s defense team stressed that ex-CEO for WorldCom had nothing to do with phony accounting of the company’s top officials and received no monthly revenue reports to cut the fraud out.
Ebbers denied he was informed about the accounting fraud by ex-finance chief Scott Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan said in his testimony that Ebbers was well aware about WorldCom’s affairs, sometimes having more information than top financial executives. Ebbers said he could not recall whether he had spoken to the finance chief tête-à-tête. "Generally, we would talk about financial results with a group of people," he said.

Mr. Ebbers may be imprisoned for a maximum of 85 years, if convicted, while his co-worker and friend Mr. Sullivan faces 25 years in jail.

Naming the reasons for Ebbers’s conviction, Mr. Johnson mentioned the testimonies of Mr. Sullivan, then WorldCom’s financial chief, and David F. Myers, WorldCom’s former controller, to whom, according to the testimony, Mr. Ebbers apologized for having forced company accountants to make accounting changes.
"WorldCom had truly become WorldCon” when Ebbers was the company’s CEO, said Mr. Johnson. "Bernie Ebbers was the leader of WorldCom and the leader of the con," he added.