From AP/AOL ....Same story, different slant....Seriously, I'm wondering if companies wouldn't be better off WITHOUT so called legal and accounting advice.....(Hundreds of millions paid in fees, and JUST LOOK at the MESS this company is in....and probably several others, including Global Crossing.)
From the CSPAN hearings I watched, it was evident that many of the Senators wouldn't know the difference if a company had had advice, or did whatever they did on their own....Speaking particularly of Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein here...Did you watch ANY of the hearings...And I personally think Skilling is a very bright man, driven by a huge ego....I think Sharon Watkins is a believable witness.
Ex-Enron Chief Decries Congress
By MARCY GORDON
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling, whose testimony to Congress is being challenged, says he couldn't have overseen everything at the company and faults lawmakers for ``acting as judge and jury'' in an election year.
No one should expect in the aftermath of Enron's collapse that a top executive would have known everything or been the one to ``close out the cash drawers'' every night, Skilling said in a television interview.
Skilling, saying he believed ``we made the right decisions'' before Enron collapsed into the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in December, defended himself in an interview aired Friday night on CNN's ``Larry King Live.''
Some lawmakers say Skilling knew more about questionable financial transactions than he told two congressional panels recently and have asked him to clear up what they see as discrepancies between his testimony and accounts of former colleagues.
Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Skilling in a letter Thursday that documents obtained by the panel's investigators ``appear to raise serious questions about the accuracy of your testimony.''
Skilling testified that he could not recall being involved in approving transactions related to the so-called Raptors, fragile financial structures that kept more than $1 billion in debt off Enron's books and eventually toppled the energy-trading company.
The Raptors' main financial assets improperly consisted of Enron's own stock, which plummeted last year.
Skilling, who abruptly resigned in August, testified in appearances last month before the House committee and the Senate Commerce Committee that when he left, he believed Enron was in strong financial condition, and its financial reports accurately reflected its condition. He said in the CNN interview he was shocked by Enron's precipitous collapse as well as by the suicide in January of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, whom he called ``my best friend.''
Skilling said the company had ``one of the best control systems in the world,'' with hundreds of lawyers and accountants vigilant against financial risk.
``It used to be kind of a joke in Enron that you couldn't go to the men's room without the accountants and the lawyers going in with you,'' he recounted.
Still, despite the controls put in place by company managers, the board of directors and its audit committee, Skilling said, ``Can those controls catch everything? Of course not.''
``Does a CEO of McDonald's ... go and close out the cash drawers of every store every night? ... You rely on the people within the company,'' he said.
In a new disclosure, data obtained by Justice Department prosecutors from company computers shows that Enron paid its executives huge one-time bonuses - totaling $320 million - as rewards for hitting stock-price targets, The New York Times reported Friday. The stock targets, ending in 2000, were reached at the same time investigators say Enron officials were improperly inflating company profits by hundreds of millions of dollars, thereby buoying the stock price.
Documents obtained by the Energy and Commerce Committee show that former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and other Enron executives told company investigators last month that Skilling knew details of many of the transactions.
Skilling, who combatively defended himself and sometimes lectured senators during a five-hour appearance Tuesday, said in the CNN interview, ``It's an election year. ... I think the Congress is acting as judge and jury.''
AP-NY-03-01-02 1637EST
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