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Non-Tech : The Enron Scandal - Unmoderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (805)	1/28/2002 4:33:06 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

Ex-Enron CEO's Wife Says They Are Broke Monday January 28 3:33 PM ET By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The wife of ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay said on Monday her family lost its fortune when the energy trading giant collapsed and her husband had done ``absolutely nothing wrong'' in the biggest bankruptcy case in U.S. history. In an interview with NBC's ``Today'' show taped over the weekend at her home in Houston, Linda Lay defended her husband as a decent, moral person who like many thousands of others linked to Enron Corp., was fighting against personal bankruptcy. ``Other than the home we live in, everything else is for sale,'' she said. ``We are fighting for liquidity. We don't want to go bankrupt.'' Enron fell in just weeks last year from No. 7 on the Fortune 500 list of large companies to filing the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2, wiping out billions of dollars in equity and devastating employee retirement funds. The Justice Department (news - web sites), the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites), the Labor Department (news - web sites) and at least eight congressional committees are investigating questionable tax shelters and accounting practices on the part of the company, which until its downfall was President Bush (news - web sites)'s biggest political patron. Asked what had happened to the reported $300 million in compensation and stocks her husband earned over the past four years, Linda Lay said the couple relied on now-worthless Enron stock and did not have a diverse portfolio. ``It's gone. There's nothing left. Everything we had mostly was in the one stock,'' she said, adding they were also under pressure due to cash calls on their long-term investments. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Houston, Lay received $101 million in proceeds from the sale of Enron stock between October 1998 and November 2001. His wife said that Lay, who quit as chairman and chief executive officer of Enron Corp. last week but who will remain on the company's board of directors, had been grossly misunderstood and was the victim of ``mass hysteria.'' ``Nobody even knows what the truth is yet. The only thing I know, 100 percent for sure, is that my husband is an honest, decent, moral human being who would do absolutely nothing wrong. That I know 100 percent,'' she said. Linda Lay, whose five children also came out in support of their father, said she could understand the anger and loss felt by Enron employees about her husband's publicly upbeat attitude toward the company before it dived. Much of the criticism of Lay has centered on mounting evidence he knew of the energy company's debt-ridden position even as he was advising his staff to buy Enron stock, which is now worthless. ``If I were back there listening to all the things that were being said I would absolutely have to say, 'What is wrong here? How can all of this be happening without someone doing something terribly wrong?''' Linda Lay said. But she said there were many things her husband had not been told that would come out in the many investigations now under way. ``Those things will all come to light and that's what we're all praying for.'' Congressional hearings began in Washington last week into Enron's fall and the role of its auditor, Big Five accounting firm Andersen. Legislators are very interested in the destruction of thousands of documents related to Enron audits. Lay's contacts with the administration have also come under scrutiny with the admissions he called Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Bush's 2000 campaign manager, last fall to warn them of Enron's mounting financial problems. REALITY SET IN IT WAS OVER Linda Lay broke down as she recalled a couple of days before Enron collapsed when her husband came home from work and said he could not turn the company around. ``He said he had tried everything he could think of and he could not stop it,'' she sobbed, adding: ``(He was) devastated, devastated for his employees.'' Asked how she felt toward those who said her husband betrayed them, she replied, ``We've lost everything but I don't feel Ken has betrayed me. I'm sad, I'm desperately sad but I don't know where to place the anger. I don't know who to get mad at. I just know my husband did not have an involvement.'' The Enron saga took a tragic turn last Friday with the apparent suicide of J. Clifford Baxter, who had resigned as vice chairman of Enron Corp last year and who was said to have opposed the accounting practices of the company. Linda Lay said her family was devastated by Baxter's death, adding that her husband had spoken to him not too long ago. ``Cliff was a wonderful man. It's a perfect example of how the media can play such havoc and destruction in people's lives. This is the ultimate. This is a loss of life.'' ``It makes my heart, it makes Ken's heart ache,'' she added. ''Had we known we would have picked up the phone and called him. We would have gone and been with him. We would have done anything we could to have helped him, helped his family but we had no idea he was in that kind of pain.'' Lay came out of retirement last year to return to his old job as CEO. Asked how she would change her life, if given the chance, his wife said: ``Selfishly, probably that my husband never went back to Enron.''