Fastow trial may be a year away (scheme to profit himself at Enron shareholders expense)

The case against former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and two others may not go to trial until next spring and could take as long as four months to try.

During a scheduling conference Monday morning, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt called the government's plans to start the trial this October "a little optimistic," noting the millions of documents, dozens of charges and the recent addition of two new defendants.

Hoyt said it was possible it could take until next spring to allow defense attorneys to properly review all the evidence against them and make pretrial motions.

Enron Task Force prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said the government did not plan to add additional charges to the case if it would interfere with scheduling the trial this fall.

He said the investigation into Enron is ongoing and that he could not "predict the future" when it came to other charges.

Weissmann said the government's side of the case will take two months to present in trial, while defense attorneys indicated they would want an equal amount of time.

A trial date was not scheduled, but Hoyt told the lawyers to continue with discovery and return in two months to possibly set a date.

Later Monday morning, David Gerger, Fastow's Houston-based lawyer, pleaded not guilty for his client to nearly 100 charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, obstruction of justice, money laundering, insider trading and filing false income tax returns.

The former chief financial officer could face, theoretically, 1,142 years in prison, with fines of more than $27 million. If he's found guilty, federal sentencing guidelines would determine his sentence.

Fastow originally was the subject of a 78-count indictment issued in October 2002, but the new charges filed in April added 31 more counts and two co-defendants, former Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan and former Enron finance employee Dan Boyle.

Glisan appeared at the scheduling conference before Hoyt, but Fastow and Boyle did not attend and were not required to.

John Keker, Fastow's California-based lawyer, told Hoyt that although they have already indexed more than 1,000 boxes of material provided by the government in the case, much of the information had portions that were blacked out, and there was much more work to do. He said there are 1,500 more boxes of material at the Securities and Exchange Commission that the lawyers have not yet been allowed to see.

Glisan's attorney, Henry Schuelke, said he would need many months to review the documents that Fastow's team has been reviewing.

Schuelke said third parties in the cases, such as Enron Corp. and investment bank Merrill Lynch, have been reluctant to provide access to documents related to the charges because of a perception the Justice Department would punish them for cooperating.

Weissmann denied there was such a threat, either real or implied, and said the government would provide access to any documents it used to develop its case.

On Monday, Weissmann gave defense attorneys thick stacks of documents that were what he called the "hot documents" that would be central to the government's case.

The indictment alleges the conspiracy involved fraudulent transactions with investment bank Merrill Lynch, special purpose entities and others that were designed to hide the company's business performance, and filing false and misleading statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unlike Fastow, with nearly 100 charges, Glisan faces 24 counts, while Boyle faces just two. Glisan and Boyle previously pleaded not guilty to the charges.

According to the indictment, Fastow, Glisan and Boyle schemed to manipulate Enron's financial reports, artificially boost the share price, circumvent federal regulations so Enron could obtain undeserved tax benefits and enrich themselves at the expense of Enron and its shareholders. .........The indictment alleges the conspiracy involved fraudulent transactions with investment bank Merrill Lynch, special purpose entities and others that were designed to hide the company's business performance, and filing false and misleading statements with the SEC.....

This corrupt individual Fastow didn't give a fig about shareholders. laws or other "inconveniences". Conniver Fastow musta lain awake nights plotting and scheming on how to fatten his and his wife's bank account on the backs of Enron's small shareholders, investors, working class people who depended on Enron for their livelihood, and older workers who were counting on a pension.

Then Fastow went into the world posing as a "humanitarian" and "pillar of the community."

BTW, Andy, here's some good advice....whatever you do, don't drop the soap in those communal prison showers.

I doubt if Fastow and the others, would have conceived this plan if white collar thieves were, and had always been, punished SEVERELY for their crimes. These crimes are not exactly "smash and grab". There is always an evidence trail, meaning the chances of getting away with it are scant.

The problem arises when this type of crook is caught. When they are punished, which is not always, the punishment is relatively light.

This kind of crime is becoming more and more common, reaching down into very small businesses and very small local governments. These thieves get off much more lightly than some poor schmuck who reaches into an open cash register and runs off with a hundred bucks.

If a society,or even an individual, wishes to stop a certain type of behavior, exhibited by another, over whom they have some measure of control, then they must punish that behavior to such an extent that it happens much less frequently or stops completely.

Parents and schools are being prevented from punishing children, with very predictable results (try teaching or subbing in today's schools). I would dare say that the U.S. has never suitably punished terrorists and their supporters. Though it could be argued that situation is presently being addressed, too much damage has already occured.

There is a man out in California, sitting on several hundred million dollars (I forget the name of the company that also soaked small investors), who should be dragged out of his house, tarred and feathered, and stood on a block of ice with a rope around his neck. Sometimes one yearns for the days of simple frontier justice.

But one can hardly expect a justice system, where many of the insiders are guilty of the very same crimes, to want to punish such crimes too severely. Of course there will be a sacrificial lamb or two, because of the hue and cry of the recent past. The most outrage (and mostly to try to make political hay) has been expressed by our Congresscritters, who, coincidently, benefit greatly from the sleazeballs that they so revile.

I agree with most of what you posted.

But you must consider that never has our culture been as uncvil and as defiant of the law as it has since the rise of unfettered liberalism.

Not only is this exemplified by Fastow's monumental crimes, but by the NY Times' corruption scandal, and the recent brutal high school hazing, to name just a few.

The Times corruption is a blaring social commentary about our culture and the moral relativity liberals have inflicted on us. We are reaping the liberal whirlwind via the complete breakdown of civility and law, the enormity of the magnitude of crimes being committed, and the absence of any kind of moral restraint and personal responsibility (as Jayson Blair and the hazers demonstrated).

The liberal mantra, "If it feels good, do it," was never more obvious than in the Blair case and the hazing atrocities.

Liberal's political correctness obsession is also to blame and goes hand in hand with liberals' sick moral relativity.

America and our future as a stable society is at take here. In my mind, liberals are cultural zeros and all of their inane policies have corrupted the culture to an abysmal low.

As epitomized by Fastow - not to mention the conniving Clintons - liberal corruption is so endemic, it is tantamount to sedition.

Let's begin with liberals' belief system:

1. Businesses create oppression and government creates opportunity.
2. Unqualified public school teachers who can't teach 4th-graders how to read are experienced sex therapists, qualified to teach elemntary students about sex, abortion, and birth control.
3. Traditional gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is a government-protected lifestyle.
4. Self-esteem is paramount; government must guarantee each citizen self-esteem.
5. The NRA is bad, because it defends the Constitution; the ACLU is good, because destroying religion and silencing believers is protected by the Constitution and the First Amendment.
6. The AIDS virus is spread by lack of funding.
7. Standardized IQ tests are racist; racial quotas and affirmative action are not.
8. Conservatives are racists; everybody knows that black people can't make it on their own without government help.
9. Victimhood is preferred over responsible citizenship, and, besides, being a victim confers social status, government assistance, job preference, and appearances on network TV.

The Democratic Party's dominant ideology is victimology: It is the party of those who, feeling put-upon, nurse political identities, defined by membership in grievance groups.

The victimized groups are easily perceived b/c they usually have a hyphen attached to their separate identity.

Demoocrat liberals simply cannot feel good about themselves unless they have victims......hyphenated-victims. Feel-good liberal types have an utter contempt for the rest of humanity

The problem, like so many other of society's self-described "tolerant and compassionate types," is that their ego-driven "sense of entitlement" is so outsized and demanding that they cannot stand to have a discouraging word spoken about themselves.....thus they engage in the political correctness atrocity which abhors criticism.

Liberals revive the spectre of a despised monarchy (that a Revolutionary War displaced), by setting themselves apart from the commoners, and demanding to be coddled and cosseted at every moment.

Marie Antoinette's infamous, "Let 'em eat cake," is the moral equivalent of contemporary liberals' sense of entitlement which thay extort by political correctness and victimology.

Victimology is defined as the art of blaming and finding others responsible for your own personal failures, then looking and expecting the Federal government to make it all better. It is sometimes referred to as the "whining of America".

Liberals have indeed become a worthless class of whiners. These self-absorbed liberal humanoids, like the conniving Clintons, with their exaggerated sense of entitlement, demand the common folk kneel in obeisance and comply whenever they indicate their wishes. When commoners dared speak up about the Clintons, they were demonized, and publicly labeled a VRWC.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.