No indictments yet in Enron case; maybe never

Seattle Post Intelligencer ^ | July 31, 2002 | MARILYN GEEWAX

[sarcasm]

WASHINGTON -- ImClone Systems Chief Executive Samuel Waksal is facing perhaps 10 years in prison on insider trading charges. Adelphia Communications' founder John Rigas and his two sons are under arrest too, led from their homes in handcuffs.

Arthur Andersen LLP, once a revered accounting firm, stands convicted of obstructing justice.

But more than nine months after Enron Corp. began collapsing amid a massive accounting scandal, not one of its executives has been indicted.

"The Enron task force has been left in the dust by the other investigations" into corporate wrongdoing, said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor and former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyer.

Frenkel said that while laid-off Enron employees, retirees and other stakeholders might be horrified at this thought, it "certainly is possible" that no criminal charges will ever be brought against Enron executives.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., questioned the pace of the investigation while speaking with reporters. "I don't know why we haven't seen any indictments of Enron yet. ... What is going on there?"

Daschle said "more and more people have begun to express" concerns about the lack of criminal charges. "We don't know what the answers are, of course," he said. "That's up to the Justice Department."

Enron was the largest single source of financial contributions to the political campaigns of George W. Bush.

Frenkel and other experts say the slow pace of the Justice Department's investigation of the Houston-based energy company is not surprising.

Because Enron's financial transactions were enormously complex, "the investigation is going to take longer" than one of a relatively simple matter, such as shredding documents, said Frenkel, now an attorney in the Washington office of Smith Gambrell & Russell, LLP, based in Atlanta.

Pamela Stuart, a former federal prosecutor and former Justice Department trial attorney, agreed that months of inquiry are "perfectly normal" in corporate fraud cases. But Enron presents even more difficulties than most, she said.

Besides having to sort through transactions that zigzagged from Houston to London to the Cayman Islands, the Justice Department has "had to assemble a prosecutorial team brought in from two coasts because the entire U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston had to recuse itself," said Stuart, an attorney in Washington. "Having to build a whole team from scratch sounds like a nightmare."

Investigators also have had to face the daunting challenge "of finding all the right documents ... when so many got shredded," she said.

And finally, a corporate fraud case involves interviewing numerous employees. "Typically, you work from the bottom up, figuring out which secretaries, couriers and administrative assistants" might have witnessed wrongdoing, she said.

"You want to get it right, and that means building your case brick by brick, person by person," she said.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said the federal "investigation is ongoing and active."

Sierra would not predict when the inquiry, begun in late January, might end. "It's a very complicated investigation," he said. "But prosecutors are plugging away."

The Enron investigation, which involves prosecutors and FBI agents in Houston, Washington and San Francisco, covers many possible crimes, including the alleged defrauding of shareholders; insider trading of stock by executives; theft from company-backed partnerships and price gouging of California electricity consumers.

Enron's business deals were examined and approved by either Andersen or the law firms Vinson & Elkins and Kirkland & Ellis. So executives might argue that they were acting on the advice of experts.There still could be civil violations," Frenkel said.

[meenie]

Ex Post Facto prevents any prosecution for deeds done in the past. With the bill being signed yesterday, most of the prosecution must be done under the disclosure rules already in effect by the SEC. Most of the rules in effect were civil penalties. Don't expect too much to be accomplished in the future.

[2sheep]

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[backhoe]

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