Bernie Ebbers was the founder and CEO of phone company WorldCom. The company engaged in a series of increasingly large debt-financed acquisitions of other companies. These acquisitions made the company grow quickly which made the stock price increase dramatically. However, because the acquired companies all had different accounting systems, WorldComs financial records were a mess. When the companys performance started to flatten out, Bernie coerced WorldCom accountants to engage in a number of fraudulent activities to make net income look better than it really was and thus prop up the stock price. One of these frauds involved treating $7 billion of operating costs as capital expenditures which in the past had always been expensed appropriately following GAAP matching principle procedures. The capitalization delayed expense recognition to future periods thus boosting current-period profits.

Indicate at least one control that is missing or lacking and explain how or why??