Of or relating to shady business practices, financial tricks, misuse of public funds, etc.
In the US we had Ken Lay and friends from Enron; across the pond in the UK, there was Ian Robert Maxwell (1923-1991). Maxwell was a Czechoslovakian-born British publisher who became notorious for misusing his employees' pension funds of some 400 million pounds. He also engaged in dubious transactions between his private companies and a public company to prop them up and boost the share prices.
For his resilience to rebound after a castigating government report, he earned the nickname the Bouncing Czech.
-Anu Garg
"Admittedly, the case is complex -- 'potentially Maxwellian' is how one forensic accountant described it." Jim Armitage; Independent Insurance Collapsed Four Years Ago; Evening Standard (London, UK); Feb 4, 2005.
This week's theme: eponyms (words coined after people's names).
Permalink:
http://wordsmith.org/words/maxwellian.html