Newspaper editorial (3)

[HaraKiriBlade]

She will vote in favour of a Liberal budget she has told the House of Commons is "flawed and defective" and built on "an accounting shell game" reminiscent of "Enron and WorldCom."

What would 'an accounting shell game' be?

I only have rough ideas of the boldened words, and to me they just don't connect.

Accounting, as I understand, has something to do with numbers. Numbers in business, numbers in our tax / tax return, and etc... that's all I know.

Shell, all I know about it is that it's a hard encasement.
And I think it could imply 'empty' depending on its use.

Anyone?

[Tdol]

A shell is something that is empty on the inside in accounting; Enron had shell companies with paper profits that were just there to inflate profits and conceal the truth, etc (I'm hazy on the details of exactly what they did).