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Notes -
One of the problems with prosecuting this type of case is that there is no command responsibility under civilian criminal law, so although you can assume the founder-CEO (who will get by far the largest personal payoff and so has the motive) is the actual guilty party, you can't prosecute him unless you can prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that he was personally involved in some specific crime. A good criminal CEO (like a good mafia boss) tells his subordinates "make the numbers work, I understand that you might need to fudge them a bit, I don't need to know the details". Even a mediocre one knows not to write things down when criming. And any criminal CEO can turn up at trial and say they are shocked, shocked to find that their CFO is a crook. RICO mostly stops this defence working in a mafia case, but it doesn't apply to corporate fraud.
And in practice the only way to win a case against the CEO is to flip the CFO (who can't avoid hands-on criming given the nature of their role in the scheme, and so usually gets charged first) on him. The classic example is Enron, where Fastow flipped on Lay and Skilling in exchange for a relatively lenient sentence. Lay and Skilling's defence was indeed "We didn't know what Fastow was doing so we can't be criminally liable for it." I don't know why Hussain didn't take a plea deal (based on the reported appeal, he didn't have much of a defence) but his going to trial probably sunk the case against his boss. Under the civil standard things are easier - HP won their civil case in England against Lynch personally.
Personally I favour a RICO-like law for large-scale corporate crime where a CEO can be convicted of running a systemically criminal company even it isn't proven that they personally knew about specific crimes. CEOs in general, and founder-CEOs in particular, have enough power over their own companies that command responsibility applies morally, and I think the law should align. If you genuinely know so little about your own company that it can be as corrupt as Enron or Autonomy without you being involved, then you should resign (as a non-owner CEO) or sell it (as a founder-CEO).
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