Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is holding up a failed Enron Corp. power project in India -- which former President Clinton helped broker and fund with government loans -- as a lesson in bad public policy and business. The case study, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily, is used in a class taught by Kennedy School professor Henry Lee. The study pans the Enron-led deal, a $3 billion power-plant project in India, as risky and financially unfeasible from the start. Yet the Clinton administration backed the project with more than $642 million in...

Enron Is Center of U.S. Probe of Alleged Power-Price Fraud Mon Sep 16, 2:03 AM ET WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors are investigating alleged fraud by Enron Corp. in the manipulation of power prices in three Western states during the California electricity crisis two years ago, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported. The Justice Department is presenting evidence to a new grand jury that was convened in San Francisco this summer, lawyers close to the case said. It is the second grand jury in the Enron case; a special grand jury in Houston already had been investigating last year's collapse of the...

"Green" groups do quite well for themselves courtesy of business and foundations derived from corporate wealth (Pew, Ford, Rockefeller, Heinz, MacArthur). Still, the green machine is not free from financial challenge. History has proven they cannot rely upon industrial mishaps despite their lucrative bombast in response. Revenue problems forced even the icon Greenpeace to merge with a fairly obscure rival. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development earlier this month, however, industry and greens got even cozier in a desperate move to suppress the availability of energy. Some of these businesses merely continue the wildly unsuccessful pattern of seeking to...

The environmentalists have already scored a major victory at Earth Summit II. A United Nations agency that helped Enron develop Communist China´s energy resources is getting almost $3 billion more from the U.S. and other countries. In advance of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, being held August 26-September 4 in South Africa, the United Nations announced on August 17 that a fresh $2.9 billion will be funneled into its Global Environment Facility (GEF). The U.S. is listed by the GEF as one of 32 donor countries to the "replenishment" of the GEF. The head of the GEF says he...

<p>Federal prosecutors, under intense pressure to collar Enron's former chief executives, may resort to nailing the well-connected former chairman Ken Lay through his whopping big stock sales. Lay, a personal friend of President Bush, raked in tens of millions of dollars selling Enron stock at the same time he was publicly touting the stock to employees and shareholders.</p>

Who lobbies for Enron? Enron Understated Its Lobbying Expenditures, CRP Analysis Finds Below is a list of Enron-related lobbying expenditures for the first six months of 2001, reported by lobbying firms hired by Enron Corp. (An asterisk means the firm listed Enron Corp. as a client, but reported activity of less than $10,000. These firms were not included in the total reported by outside firms.) Quinn Gillespie & Associates LLC – $525,000Wyatt Tarrant & Combs LLP – $500,000 Bracewell & Patterson – $360,000 Sideview Partners Inc – $200,000 Alexander Strategy Group – $120,000 Commonwealth Group – $40,000Bob Moss Associates –...

Enron's Democrat Pals Documents obtained by TIME show the energy giant enjoyed much closer ties with Clinton Administration regulators than was generally known Before its messy decline and fall, Enron had plenty of clout in George W. Bush's Washington, from the personal ties between chairman Ken Lay and the President to the company's alleged influence on Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. But Enron's cozy relationship with Washington didn't start there. Documents obtained by TIME show the energy giant enjoyed much closer ties with Clinton Administration regulators than was generally known. Long before Cheney's task force met with...

<p>NEW YORK -- The judge in the Enron Corp. bankruptcy case ruled Thursday to grant 115 rank-and-file Enron employees legal waivers that exempt them from having to give back any of the bonuses they received days before the company's bankruptcy filing.</p> <p>The ruling represents an extension of a key-employee retention plan Judge Arthur Gonzalez approved in April.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - Federal energy regulators Tuesday began a formal investigation of Enron after a preliminary review found that the bankrupt power-trader had used ``deceit'' and ``false information'' in an attempt to profit from California's troubled electricity market.</p> <p>In addition to probing three Enron subsidiaries for possible misconduct during the California crisis in 2000 and 2001, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that it had launched investigations of two out-of-state electric utilities that did business with Enron. The commission will try to determine whether the companies illegally manipulated California's energy market, leading to sky-high electricity prices and rolling blackouts.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators say they have evidence Enron and two other energy-trading firms manipulated electricity and natural gas prices during California's energy crisis.</p> <p>While the findings by its staff are only preliminary, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Tuesday launched formal investigations to determine if Enron, together with El Paso Electric Co. and Avista Corp., distorted prices at a time when California was scrambling to buy electricity.</p> <p>"Enron's corporate culture ... fostered a callous disregard for the American energy customer," staffers wrote in this interim report to Congress sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday.</p>

Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 10:50 AM Subject: Enron Scandal Points to Indonesia > http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/8/12/153512.shtml> > Enron FOIA documents - http://www.softwar.net/enron.html> > Enron Scandal Points to Indonesia> Charles R. Smith> Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002> Energy CEO Invited to 2001 Space Conference> > Much has been written about Enron's supposed connections to the Bush> administration. Instead of engaging in speculation, this reporter sought out the> facts and I have uncovered the black gold of journalism, real documentation> linking Enron to corrupt deals.> > In response to a 2001 Freedom of Information request, the U.S. Commerce> Department indicated that it might have...

BRAD FOSS, AP Business WriterMonday, August 12, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/12/financial1615EDT0223.DTL (08-12) 13:15 PDT NEW YORK (AP) -- Among a group of laid-off Enron workers who are asking a bankruptcy court for extra pay are five insiders who reaped $7 million in the year before the company's collapse. They include the wife of former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling. The five insiders joined 49 other former colleagues in opting out of a tentative agreement negotiated earlier this summer that would give some 3,550 laid-off workers as much as $13,500 each in severance. Instead, they filed individual claims -- with...

A year later, Watkins' memo tip of iceberg By TOM FOWLER Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle As the business world raised a collective eyebrow at the resignation of Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling a year ago this week, another executive inside the company was busy trying to raise alarms. On Aug. 15, Sherron Watkins, a former Arthur Andersen accountant-turned-Enron vice president, fired off a lengthy memo to Chairman Ken Lay laying bare her concerns over accounting issues that were threatening to boil over and expose the company to deep losses. "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a...

Aug. 11, 2002, 1:35PM Skilling feeling the heat Ex-Enron CEO expects chargesBy MICHAEL HEDGESCopyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau One year after resigning ahead of the Enron Corp. cataclysm, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling is preparing for likely criminal charges and an ensuing legal battle that will determine his future. "He definitely understands there is a strong risk of indictment," said his brother Mark, a lawyer and writer living in Istanbul, Turkey. "He thinks he has committed no crime, but he understands in the political climate that exists now, anything is possible," Mark Skilling said. Lawyers and analysts either directly...

Aug. 8, 2002, 2:28PM Ex-Enron trader is a no-show in power price case Associated Press WASHINGTON - An Ohio federal court was asked to enforce a subpoena against a former Enron Corp. electricity trader after he failed to give testimony ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to documents filed today. John Forney, formerly a manager with the bankrupt energy giant's electricity trading desk in Portland, Oregon, is a key figure in Enron's trading practices that are being investigated by several federal agencies and prosecutors. Forney did not appear for a deposition in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday for a...

Ex-Executives Say Sham Deal Helped EnronBy DAVID BARBOZA OUSTON, Aug. 7 — Desperate to meet a year-end profit target, the Enron Corporation struck a sham energy deal with Merrill Lynch that let Enron book a $60 million profit in the final days of December 1999, according to former Enron executives involved in the transaction.The executives said that the energy deal, a complex set of gas and power trades, was intended to inflate Enron's profits and drive up its stock price. Enron and Merrill Lynch, they said, agreed that the deal would be canceled after Enron booked the profits; it later...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors are investigating whether or not Enron Corp. bribed foreign government officials to win contracts abroad, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The Justice Department ( news - web sites)'s Enron Task Force is examining the energy company's non-U.S. operations for possible criminal violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the paper said citing government officials and lawyers close to the case. Enron was quoted in the Journal as denying ever paying bribes, and said that it had "a clear anticorruption policy prohibiting the payment, solicitation and receipt of bribes in any form." The...

Aug. 1, 2002, 11:44PM Enron mined California loopholes Company lied about capacity during crisis By DAVID IVANOVICH Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Enron Corp. lied to California's electric grid operator and took advantage of flaws in the state's deregulation plan to exploit California's electricity crisis, federal regulators said. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in drafting its master plan for the nation's wholesale power markets, tried to incorporate safeguards to ensure traders cannot act as Enron did at a time when California was struggling to keep the lights on. Examining the strategies Enron is known to have used,...

Enron at the CIA "Are you one of those Enron guys?" We hear this is a common question put to new employees at CIA headquarters by their fellow colleagues - once their colleagues discover they once worked for the agency. At least a dozen top Enron operatives have joined the CIA. Better put, these officers have returned to the CIA. Apparently, Enron recruited heavily from the CIA to help field its global operations dealing with major corporations and nations. With Enron having gone bust and the economy in turmoil, Enron has turned out to be a source of veteran CIA...

This is the second of 5 articles detailing what happened at Enron. It is extremely interesting and easy to understand for everyone (even those that don't have an advanced degree in accounting). There are links to the first article and, I suppose, the last three will come over the next couple of days. This particular report focuses on Jeff Skilling and his role in the collapse... Here's an interesting excerpt: "Skilling's most important innovation may have been in spearheading a fundamental change in the way Enron did business. In 1992, he persuaded federal regulators to permit the company to use...