There have been laws in place since the 1970s that basically state that it is illegal for a corporation to “cook its books” (manipulate its revenue and earnings reports), but it took the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 to really put teeth into those existing laws.
SOX is a U.S. federal law that, among other things, could send executives to jail if it was discovered that their company was submitting fraudulent accounting findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
SOX is based upon the COSO model, so for a corporation to be compliant with SOX, it has to follow the COSO model. Companies commonly implement ISO/IEC 27000 standards and COBIT to help construct and maintain their internal COSO structure.