Cheney Spoke to Indian Officials on Enron Project
Updated 1:13 PM ET January 18, 2002
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House disclosed on Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to Indian government officials last year about Enron Corp.'s investment in a $2.9 billion power project, but said his goal was to minimize U.S. exposure to losses in the idle plant.
The White House said Cheney's outreach on behalf of Enron, President Bush's biggest political patron, was justified since the Dabhol power project was financed in part through the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).
OPIC is a taxpayer-backed agency that provides ``political risk'' insurance to help U.S. companies invest in developing nations.
``The United States taxpayers have an exposure to risk and loss through OPIC,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. ``It's not uncommon for (companies) to have exposures which do require contacts between American officials and government officials in other countries to minimize those risks to taxpayers.''
The White House has sought to distance itself from the widening scandal surrounding Enron, the energy-trading giant that collapsed in the autumn and filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2 after trying to solicit aid from the Bush administration. The White House says it did nothing to help the Houston-based company avert collapse as it monitored the situation.
ENRON A LONGTIME BUSH BACKER
Enron was Bush's biggest political backer heading into the 2000 presidential election. The company made about $623,000 in contributions to his campaigns since 1993, when he was raising money for his first Texas gubernatorial race, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
The Dabhol power plant, about 155 miles south of Bombay, has been idle since June due to a tariff dispute with its sole customer, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), the government-run monopoly distributor of electric power in the area.
Enron owns 65 percent of Dabhol, General Electric Co. and construction firm Bechtel Corp. each own 10 percent and MSEB the remaining 15 percent. OPIC was one of the many multilateral funding agencies that lent money to Dabhol.
The plant was almost completed when construction on the 1,444-megawatt second phase was halted after the MSEB fell $240 million behind in payments for power provided. The 740-megawatt first phase began operating in May 1999.
According to New York's Daily News, Cheney tried to help Enron collect a $64 million debt from the giant energy project. Citing government documents, the Daily News said Cheney mentioned Enron in a June 27 meeting with Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the main opposition Congress party.
The documents showed the National Security Council had given OPIC high hopes that Bush would raise the issue with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in a Nov. 9 meeting, the newspaper reported.
But a Nov. 8 e-mail, whose sender and recipient are blacked out, said, ``President Bush cannot talk about Dabhol.'' White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, who was previously paid $50,000 a year as an Enron adviser, also ``was advised that he could not discuss Dabhol,'' according to the Daily News. |
