In the case of MCI, the corporate headquarters set various financial “targets” without explicitly telling anyone to do anything unsavory to hit them. It was then left to functionaries like Pavlo to make their numbers by deciding, for example, how much deadbeat debt would be written off each month, and how much would stay on the books a little longer pretending to be collectible, or by recording some payments— temporarily, of course—where they would look the best instead of where they belonged.
