Hey! I may already be part of a class action suit!

Yesterday I blogged about book-cooking at my beloved Echostar.

Today I find out via a news search that as someone who purchased Echostar stock between August 10, 2004 and March 9, 2005, inclusive, a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Your Humble Blogger and others.

Here's the story, folks:

EchoStar Communications Corp., whose audit committee is investigating chairman and chief executive Charlie Ergen's role in the company's accounting, has one of the worst corporate-governance ratings in the U.S., according to Institutional Shareholder Services.

The country's No. 2 satellite-television operator, based in Douglas County, is ranked lower than at least 2,925 of the 3,000 companies in the Russell 3000 index.

Chief among the concerns of ISS: Five of the board's eight members are EchoStar insiders, and Ergen controls 91 percent of the shareholder votes through a separate class of super-voting stock.

With a board that includes his wife, Cantey, and friend and EchoStar executive James DeFranco, Ergen doesn't have to answer to a majority of independent directors.

Under his watch, EchoStar may have improperly booked transactions with suppliers and made suspect consulting payments to one of his friends, people familiar with the internal probe said.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also has opened an inquiry into Ergen's role in EchoStar's accounting, said two of the people, who declined to be identified.

Steve Caulk, an EchoStar spokesman, declined to comment on the company's corporate governance.

Now, I'm not one of those people who believes that so-called "public ownership" is always such a great thing. As far as I'm concerned, it leads to the kind of "let's get through the quarter", short-term thinking that is at the core of most of the problems with major corporations. The problem is that lack of oversight requires company leadership that isn't greedy or crooked, and alas, that doesn't seem to be found anywhere in corporate America. It's growing more clear by the day that the corporate credo is "screw the consumer."

Yesterday Bernie Ebbers, who destroyed WorldCom (another highly-touted company on which I lost about $4000 from my IRA), was convicted on all charges relative to HIS corruption. But somehow I don't think this is going to be a deterrent to anyone else doing the same. Wealth, power, and corruption seem to be inextricable.

And that being the case, should we bet our retirement safety net on these kinds of people?

I'm going to be following this story closely, for obvious reasons. For now, the stock doesn't seem to be in a free-fall, and I don't have THAT much money riding on it, so it's probably worthwhile to see what happens. My guess is that the company may be sold cheaply, probably to SBC.

Stay tuned.