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Source: United Press International Enron's Ken Lay uses Web site for support Date: Sunday, January 09, 2005 10:44:25 AM EST HOUSTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Ken Lay, the former head of Houston-based Enron, is using his own Web site to put his side of things out to the public and reporters. Lay's computer-literate litigation team is making use of "sponsored links" and the Web site kenlayinfo.com to highlight carefully chosen articles about their client, interviews with Lay, some of his legal filings, biographical information and some op-ed pieces written by Lay, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Democratic Sen. John Edwards compared President Bush to former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay on Tuesday and predicted Bush "is going to be fired" by voters for the way he has run the country. Lay, a Bush friend and campaign contributor, resigned under pressure after the giant energy company's collapse and has pleaded innocent to charges of fraud, conspiracy and false statements to banks. The Democrats' vice presidential candidate assailed the potential cost of Bush policies in a second term and said of the president: "I think he believes that he's Ken Lay and America is his Enron. The truth...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder and former chairman Kenneth Lay was expected to surrender Thursday on charges stemming from the company's collapse, 2 1/2 years after the federal government launched its painstaking investigation, sources close to the case told The Associated Press. Two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said an indictment against Lay, 62, was expected to be unsealed upon or shortly after his surrender to the FBI (news - web sites). Prosecutors from the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s Enron Task Force presented an indictment to U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy in Houston on Wednesday. At...

WASHINGTON -- California governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger must explain the substance of his private May 2001 meeting with Enron chief Ken Lay, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights wrote in a letter to Schwarzenegger Tuesday. FTCR, which was the state's most vocal critic of Governor Gray Davis' handling of the energy crisis, said that if the governor-elect did not recount the meeting by the time of his inauguration, the group would ask state lawmakers to open an investigation to uncover the substance of the meeting, including any information that might further the state's efforts to return billions of dollars that...

Enron E-mails Confirm Schwarzenegger-Ken Lay MeetingDate: Tuesday, October 07 @ 18:04:55 Topic Politicians Enron E-Mails Show Arnold Met With Ken Lay During Energy CrisisConsumer Watchdog Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which obtained the e-mails, is calling on Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the meetings and disclose the information that was presented and discussed. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts...

Schwarzenegger: Total Amnesia? Enron E-Mails Show Arnold Met With Ken Lay During Energy Crisis, Says Consumer Group 10/3/03 4:00:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk Contact: Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, 310-392-0522 ext. 309 or 310-480-4170 SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 3 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which obtained the e-mails, is calling on Schwarzenegger...

The study by the Joint Committee on Taxation said Enron's management viewed its tax department as a profit center and was assisted by outside advisers that included major accounting firms, investment banks and lawyers. Now-bankrupt Enron also paid just $325 million in federal income taxes for the period 1990 to 1995 and $63 million for the 2000 to 2001 period. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee which requested the report, said the Internal Revenue Service (news - web sites) was "kept in the dark and out maneuvered." "Enron not only engaged in accounting...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A week before filing for bankruptcy protection, energy giant Enron Corp. donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party committee that helps Senate candidates, campaign finance reports show. The company, which had given 90 percent of its money to Republicans this year before the Democratic donations, also has hired high-profile Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, whose past clients include President Clinton. "Donations of this type reflect certain political realities which are followed by all major corporations," Bennett said Wednesday in explaining Enron's $50,000 checks on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Enron filed for Chapter ...

February 4, 2002 At 11th Hour, Lay Says He Won't Testify By STEPHEN LABATON and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. ASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — After a weekend of sharp criticism for his stewardship of Enron (news/quote), Kenneth L. Lay, the company's former chief executive, abruptly reversed course this evening and told Congress he would refuse to testify before two committees preparing to hear his testimony, starting on Monday. Earl J. Silbert, the lawyer for Mr. Lay, said he had decided to withdraw because "judgments have been reached and the tenor of the hearings will be prosecutorial." But Congressional aides said ...

Filed at 5:52 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two of the largest corporate collapses have at least one thing in common: company chairmen who took their creations to great heights, reaped millions from stock sales -- and said they knew nothing of problems until it was too late. Kenneth Lay's defense after Enron Corp.'s spectacular downfall was that he was largely uninformed of how the energy-trading company's finances worked. In congressional testimony this week, Global Crossing Ltd. Chairman Gary Winnick could not remember receiving a single warning about potential problems at his fiber-optic company, although senior executives were sounding alarms...

Justice Department Finds Building Criminal Case Against Lay Tough Mon Aug 26,12:40 AM ET While federal prosecutors investigating Enron's collapse appear to have a clear road map laid out to criminally charge former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, they are having a tougher time pinpointing evidence that shows former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lay intended to commit fraud, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. Both Mr. Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who departed abruptly as chief executive in August 2001, remain focuses of the Justice Department ( news - web sites)'s investigation into the Houston...

Five years ago, several executives at McKinsey & Company, America's largest and most prestigious management-consulting firm, launched what they called the War for Talent. Thousands of questionnaires were sent to managers across the country. Eighteen companies were singled out for special attention, and the consultants spent up to three days at each firm, interviewing everyone from the C.E.O. down to the human-resources staff. McKinsey wanted to document how the top-performing companies in America differed from other firms in the way they handle matters like hiring and promotion. But, as the consultants sifted through the piles of reports and questionnaires and...

In an odd way, I eagerly await the next could-be scandal that the left will attempt to hang around the neck of George W. Bush. It has become a perverse type of spectator sport for me. Granted the current "corporate greed" thing hasn't run its course and it may yet "have legs", irrespective of any truth behind it. No matter, should it die out tomorrow, whatever the next big problem may be, we can all rest assured that it will be Bush's fault. If we're to accept the rhetoric of the Democrats and the blazingly irresponsible headlines in the...

The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment. But the two controversies really aren't separate--they are one and the same. The motive...

"He said they're calling us child molesters. He said that will never wash off." Those words were spoken to an official investigative committee this year, though not, it seems, by any of the clergymen who have spent decades running a protection racket for child molesters within the Roman Catholic Church. The speaker was instead that sparkling exemplar of corporate ethics circa 2002, Jeffrey Skilling. He was telling Congress of a final conversation with J. Clifford Baxter, the shame-filled fellow Enron executive who committed suicide just as the world was learning how America's "most innovative company" (as Fortune put it) had...

After the visas-for-terrorists debacle, the folks at SUBINTSOC.NET (who claim to have special access to federal computer systems) have blown the lid off half a dozen other examples of government incompetence: "Think the recent terrorist attacks were a wake-up call for the U.S. government? Think again. Last week, the world learned that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had sent out visa-approval letters to hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi -- six months to the day after September 11! "Using our special access to ARPAnet, we decided to see what other notices had been mistakenly mailed out by government agencies. We...