Three women who shook the world

AMID the many villains, a few heroes emerge from the wreckage of the US corporate ethical scandals - three women toiling in middle-level jobs who first noticed huge scandals at the office and were not afraid to say so.

WorldCom vice president Cynthia Cooper is the dogged 37-year-old executive who uncovered the firm's bogus accounting scheme that puffed profits by nearly $4bn(£2bn) in misapplied expenses.

Cooper's persistence in bringing the alleged fraud to the attention of her bosses - eventually forcing the largest earnings restatement in US corporate history - gave her star seating in the Whistleblowers Hall of Fame. There she joins Enron's chief sceptic Sherron Watkins and Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who dared to publicly criticise her agency's handling of 11 September, sparking a Congressional investigation and shaking the male-dominated spy world to its foundation.

Watkins is a key witness in the Enron case because she sent former chief executive Ken Lay a memo describing its debt schemes as a house of cards several months before it collapsed.

The women's role in exposing these three principal scandals has changed the landscape of political, social and business values. California's legislature recently adopted a new 'whistleblower' standard aimed at prodding managers like them to expose employers' dirty laundry. The US Congress is considering more than 50 reform measures in the wake of the disclosures.

Watkins, the Enron vice president, has become a cultural icon, receiving awards and accolades for her foresight about Enron's financial woes despite the fact that she did not go public with the information until after the company collapsed. 'It's a shame I have to be recognised as a hero way down in middle management and that we can't expect more from our leaders,' she said.

Cooper, a shy, conscientious worker, has purposefully avoided the public spotlight. She will not be present at a Congressional hearing today, during which former WorldCom executives Bernie Ebbers, Cooper's old boss Scott Sullivan and Jack Grubman, the Salomon Smith Barney analyst who was WorldCom's biggest cheerleader on Wall Street, are expected to be skewered by angry politicians.

Cooper was asked to testify but the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission asked her not to attend because they did not want her at the centre of a huge media circus. Her knowledge of WorldCom's inner workings is expected to provide the backbone of any criminal charges that might be filed.