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he letter that the Enron (news/quote) executive Sherron S. Watkins sent to the chairman of the company provides a few new details about Enron's web of partnerships and raises the possibility that the company might have to reduce its past earnings by $1.3 billion more than it already has. The letter discloses for the first time the existence of an entity called Condor, which was financed with Enron stock and which made investments that generated $800 million in cash for Enron. An industry expert who has studied the letter says there is a question about whether that $800 million ...

nron (news/quote) paid no income taxes in four of the last five years, using almost 900 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries and other techniques, an analysis of its financial reports to shareholders shows. It was also eligible for $382 million in tax refunds. The company used strategies common among businesses to avoid taxes. It also used some unusual methods, among them the creation of 881 subsidiaries abroad, including 692 in the Cayman Islands, 119 in the Turks and Caicos, 43 in Mauritius and 8 in Bermuda. Two Enron subsidiaries have been accused by a group of insurers of engaging in ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Joseph Lieberman's former top aide, working as an Enron lobbyist, met three times with the senator's staff and tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between Enron's chairman and Lieberman - now leading an investigation of the oil giant. Lobbyist Michael Lewan served three years as Lieberman's chief of staff and remains a political adviser, but the relationship won't affect the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee inquiry, Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein said Wednesday. The lobbyist and Lieberman talked from time to time "but not about Enron," Gerstein said. "The senator was aware that Enron added him (Lewan) as ...

Enron Executives Board of Directors Robert A. BelferNorman P. Blake, Jr.Ronnie C. ChanJohn H. DuncanWendy L. Gramm Robert K. JaedickeKenneth L. LayCharles A. LemaistreJohn MendelsohnPaulo V. Ferraz Pereira William C. Powers, Jr.Frank SavageJohn WakehamHerbert S. Winokur, Jr.  OfficersKenneth L. Lay, Chairman, President and CEOLawrence "Greg" Whalley, President and COOMark A. Frevert, Vice ChairmanRaymond M. Bowen, Jr., Exec. VP - Finance and TreasurerMichael Brown, COO, Enron EuropeRichard B. Buy, Exec. VP, Chief Risk OfficerRichard A. Causey, Exec. VP, Chief Accounting OfficerDave Delainey, Chairman and CEO, Enron EnergyJames V. Derrick, Jr., Exec. VP and General CounselJanet Dietrich, President, Enron EnergyJames Fallon, President ...

1/15 Brendan: The "Enronomics" offensive Just as Republicans and conservative pundits have drummed the phrase "Daschle Democrats" into our heads in recent weeks, Democrats are pushing a new catchphrase that attempts to non-rationally link the Bush administration with Enron in the minds of the public. As first predicted by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week", Democrats are planning to employ the phrase "Enronomics" to delegitimize President Bush's economic policies by comparing them to the bankrupt energy trading company: Jennifer Palmieri, the Democratic National Committee press secretary, said a nationwide party offensive beginning Jan. 21, which was to focus on the ...

We’ll examine corruption in the public and private sector this week. Inevitably, the first topic is Enron. I don’t blame Democrats one iota for attempting to parlay the company’s bankruptcy into political gain. One, it’s payback for all the investigations during Bill Clinton’s "most ethical administration in history"; two, with George W. Bush’s approval ratings (about 85 percent, depending on the poll) breaking records every week for longevity, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s disastrous presidential-tryout speech on Jan. 4 and midterm elections that at this point don’t appear to give either party a decisive edge, Democratic strategists and their ...

When Enron Corp. turned to its bankers for money in late October, the energy company needed a quick, big loan to restore investor confidence in its finances. Citigroup Inc. came up with the cash -- but with a catch. Enron owed Citigroup $250 million in unsecured debt that was coming due in early December, just one portion of the overall debt Enron owes the bank. So Citigroup told Enron it would provide $600 million of a new $1 billion secured loan -- as long as $250 million was used to pay back existing Citigroup debt, according to people familiar with ...

Watchdog: Senator Pushed End to Oversight for Campaign Contributor Phil Gramm’s Enron Favor The one person in the Enron scandal whom congress is not likely to subpoena is its own revered Phil Gramm, the retiring Republican Senator from Texas. Gramm and his wife, Wendy, have tight links to Enron, Wendy being a director and Gramm the pusher of legislation that assisted the company during its troubles last year. In December, his press secretary denied the latter charge, saying, "Senator Gramm took no role, had no say, and did not vote on the energy futures provisions." That's not the story presented ...

An accounting firm's destruction of some of energy giant Enron's financial documents may have violated a state Senate committee's subpoena, senators investigating the state's energy crisis said Tuesday. Sen. Joe Dunn, chairman of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation in the Wholesale Energy Market, said he'll ask for subpoenas to require officials from Enron and Arthur Andersen LLP, Enron's accountants, to appear for depositions about the destroyed documents. The accounting firm has admitted that it destroyed some Enron documents after federal securities regulators asked for information about Enron. "We believe that some of the documents that have been ...

As more details of the Enron debacle emerge, industry insiders see similarities with a trading scandal that Enron faced in the late 1980s - in Kenneth Lay's early years as chairman and chief executive.The affair led the company to incur a loss of $142m, a substantial amount as it made just $6m in revenues in 1987.Untangling the collapse of Enron, the seventh-biggest company in the US, has been hindered by its secretive culture. But while rivals ascribe Enron's downfall to arrogance in the face of investors' concerns, those who have known the company from its inception also cite lack of ...

WASHINGTON--Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman met with Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay last June to discuss energy policy, but the two did not discuss the company's troubled finances, Bingaman said Tuesday. The June 21 meeting was a few weeks after Bingaman, a top Senate recipient of Enron's political contributions and a former Enron stockholder, had become chairman of the energy committee following the Democrats' taking control of the Senate. "As far as I knew Enron was certainly a well-respected, solvent company," said Bingaman in a telephone interview from Santa Fe. The two men discussed proposals to restructure energy markets ...

ASHINGTON, Jan. 15 — With Attorney General John Ashcroft and virtually the entire legal staff of the United States attorney's office in Houston disqualified from the Enron (news/quote) criminal investigation, the Justice Department has been forced to rapidly assemble a pickup team of prosecutors and investigators to unravel Enron's collapse. The mammoth white-collar fraud inquiry, which focuses on an energy trading company that has been a big Republican donor and supporter of both President Bush and Mr. Ashcroft, is emerging as the most politically sensitive case yet confronted by the Bush administration. Overall, the investigation will be under the ...

Details of the Enron Corporation bankruptcy controversy are still unfolding, and whether it plays out as a business scandal or a political scandal remains to be seen. Thus far, however, Americans are much more critical of the actions of Enron executives than they are of the Bush administration. More than four in 10 Americans currently believe Enron executives engaged in illegal activity. The charge of criminal behavior at Enron is even higher among Americans who say they are closely following the news about the controversy. By contrast, few Americans tag the Bush team with criminal wrongdoing. Further evidence that the ...

Fair warning... No one is going to like what I have to say. Please... do not "flame" the messenger.You can be sure that Anderson's damage control machine started warming up quite some time ago, when the first rumors began to circulate. In my humble opinion... Arthur Anderson the company will suffer little to no financial damages from Enron and neither will the members/partners. More than likely, they won't even have to pay for a lawyer to defend them from claims arising in Enron. The firing of partners lays the blame on the partner, it is a strategic legal move ...

* Here comes Joe Lieberman. Again. * Senator Joe "Psst-wanna-buy-a-moral-compass?" Lieberman. Except he misplaced his between August and December last year.* Joe Lieberman, who turned so far away from his previously stated positions during the Presidential campaign last year that, when it was over and he returned to the Senate, he just kept on spinning and so he now has exactly the same positions as when he left for the campaign.* And remember when Lieberman's folks played up the speech he was going to deliver in the Senate which would clearly put a moral stake in the ground vis-\'e0-vis ...

Allegations of ethical misconduct by Enron, the bankrupt energy company, have prompted a wide range of responses by the 21 senators seeking reelection who have received campaign contributions from the company’s political action committee. To avoid the potentially damaging whiff of scandal, some senators are scrambling to return contributions of even the smallest amounts or donate them to charities or funds for laid-off Enron employees. They are following the example of the national congressional campaign committees, which have said they will return or donate to charities a total of $302,050 \ Other senators, however, say they see no ethical or ...

There are more sides to the worst corporate failure in history than you can imagine. The bankrupt energy trader Enron Corp., whose collapse last year is said to be the worst corporate failure in history, has 2,832 subsidiaries, of which 874 are registered in the Cayman Islands or other tax and bank secrecy havens. "The sheer number of offshore subsidiaries ... provides the company with tremendous incentive to funnel large sums of cash into ... nations with few or no bank disclosure regulations," says a report from Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. This corporate structure "provides Enron with potentially thousands of ...

January 16, 2002 Washington - The Bush administration feels under no obligation to catalog all of its contacts with Enron and will resist any "fishing expedition" aimed at forcing such disclosure, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday.Fleischer also said the Enron affair was of "a totally different nature" than the Whitewater controversy that embroiled former President Bill Clinton because "nobody has made any suggestions of wrongdoing by anybody in the White House."Fleischer's comments, made to reporters as the presidential party flew back to Washington from New Orleans, came on the heels of a series of disclosures about previously unknown ...

CNN’s Lou Dobbs lectures reporter on air about “balanced” coverage From News Box - Press Watch By Ned Stafford 02:10 pm, Frankfurt, 15-Jan-2002 08:10 am, New York FRANKFURT, Germany - Lou Dobbs certainly looked agitated Monday on his CNN program Moneyline, appearing to bawl out a reporter for not being balanced. Over here in Germany, Mr. Dobbs' program graces TV screens on CNN International at the stroke of midnight, and - news junkie that I am - I sometimes watch the first 15 minutes or so before heading off for sweet dreams. Mr. Dobbs led off with the Enron ...

<p>January 16, 2002 -- An Arthur Andersen partner, fired for ordering the destruction of documents in the Enron Corp. scandal, will meet today with congressional investigators to be grilled about the energy giant's tangled finances.</p> <p>David Duncan, the Big Five accounting firm's lead auditor on the Enron account, was axed in a stunning housecleaning yesterday. Last night, he was in Washington.</p>