Posted on 01/02/2002 12:39:10 PM PST by Native American Female Vet
Top Enron officials oversaw controversial partnerships, documents show
By Associated Press, 1/2/2002 16:18
HOUSTON (AP) Top Enron Corp. officials were directly involved in the creation and oversight of the partnerships that ultimately led to the energy company's collapse, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
One of the documents said Enron set up a review procedure to avoid conflicts of interest, because some of the partnerships were run by Enron executives, including former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, who was ousted in October. These procedures required former chief executive and president Jeff Skilling and two other senior Enron officials to approve all transactions with the partnerships, the Journal reported Wednesday.
As transactions and partnerships increased, those review procedures required more people including board members to oversee the action, the documents said.
The business deals allowed Enron to keep about half a billion dollars in losses off its books. But after questions about the deals were raised last year, Enron was forced to restate earnings back to 1997, wiping out millions in reported profits. Investors quickly lost confidence. Enron filed for bankruptcy Dec. 2.
The partnerships are the focus of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and the subject of congressional hearings. Enron also faces several lawsuits.
The Journal cited a draft version of minutes from an October 2000 Enron board meeting that said Fastow spoke of needing outside partnerships to manage Enron's finances so the company could keep growing.
The company and Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman and chief executive, have consistently said that the partnerships were adequately disclosed and that they were reviewed to prevent conflicts of interest.
Skilling, who quit in August, told last month that the partnerships were intended to save Enron money. He also said he was stunned by a federal regulatory filing that showed Fastow made more than $30 million from the partnerships and that several other Enron executives had been investors in the partnerships.
Judy Leon, a spokeswoman for Skilling, said Wednesday that Skilling had previously disclosed that he was familiar with the partnerships, but he ''was not intimately involved with the details of the particular transactions, of which there had to be many thousands.''
''Those details were dealt with at a lower level within the company,'' Leon said. Gordon Andrew, a spokesman for Fastow, declined comment.
Enron stock, which was near $80 a year ago, traded at 64 cents Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. On the Net: http://www.enron.com
I know that there are many who got hurt (shareholders etc.) with Enron's colapse, but how is Bush supposed to be involved here?
Ashland, Missouri
(is FreeRepublic sloooow for anyone else?)
Enron may be bankrupt, but the alleged victims would have the very deep pockets of Enron's legal counsel to go after, if the legal counsel knew or should have known about this questoionable conduct !!!!
Yes..for me too!
I heard the liberals radio talk show host bash Bush over this too...did any Democrats own stock in Enron?
I don't know if the Democrats were heavy stockholders in Enron.
I'm following another $325 million securities fraud scheme in Sarasota, Florida (with a near identical scheme as Enron) involving Pinnacle Towers where individuals that were involved in certain facets of this scam were the close personal acquaintances and political cronies of the Maryland Attorney General, Joseph Curran Jr. and the Florida Attorney General, Robert Butterworth, both Democrats,
The fact that so many high ranking officers at Enron were involved makes any of this B.S. about them not knowing what was going on ludicrous !!!!!
I tried to get the State of Florida to investigate the people associated with Pinnacle as far back as 1999, but federal, state and local law enforcement just rolled over for these white collar criminals, at Pinnacle with their extensive political ties.
I tried to cut and paste this article to this post but couldn't do it.
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