The fallout from Dell's accounting shell games continue.

Now, Dell boss Michael Dell has told a Citigroup technology conference in New York that he had nothing to do with it. "I was not involved in or aware of any of the accounting irregularities," Dell told investors.

"Certainly I'm not proud of what occurred at our company, but I am proud of the company overall, and I take responsibility for making sure those issues are addressed. What you have now at Dell is really a new team that is addressing all of the issues that were raised in the investigation."

Still, this issue is not going away. Investigations by the the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Securities and Exchange Commission investigation are still underway. More importantly, some of the accounting shenanigans go back well before 2004 when Dell handed over the reins to Kevin Rollins, so some of it happened on his watch.

Is this deja vu or what? Reminds me of Ronald Reagan's line during the Iran/Contra scandal: yeah, sure I was in charge but I knew nothing about it. I had the best of intentions, I just didn't ask the right questions. Or George Bush's line on the disbanding of the Iraqi military, as reported by the New York Times.

"Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the saddam hussein-era military, 'The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen.' But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, 'Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' But, he added, 'Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff,' referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser."

And then of course, there's Steve Jobs handling of Apple's backdating shenanigans.

Yeah, a bit of buck-passing goes a long way in business and politics.