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

To: Mephisto who wrote (1430)	1/29/2002 12:47:03 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

Enron employees sue company officials, auditing firm to recover lost retirement funds By KRISTEN HAYS The Associated Press 1/28/02 9:27 PM HOUSTON (AP) -- More than 400 current and former Enron Corp. employees on Monday sued several company officials and auditing firm Arthur Andersen in an effort to recover vast retirement funds lost when the energy giant filed for bankruptcy. The suit, one of several filed by employees against Enron officials, claims the defendants encouraged them to buy company stock as it plummeted in value to less than a dollar without disclosing the company's financial woes. Enron stock once sold as high as $82.73 per share. The company also allegedly locked down employee 401(k) accounts in late October and early November while switching administrators, preventing them from selling as shares tumbled. "They structured financial dealings in such a complicated and impenetrable manner that even the most veteran Enron employees had no way of discerning the company's true financial status," said Rod Jordan, the coalition's chairman and one of 4,500 workers laid off after the company filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2. Plaintiffs didn't name Enron as a defendant because the bankruptcy holds lawsuits against the company at bay until it is resolved, said George Whittenburg, one of the attorneys representing employees. In other Enron developments Monday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson boarded a caravan of three buses and left Houston for Washington to petition federal officials for financial assistance for laid off Enron workers. Jackson was joined on the trip by a small group of former Enron workers who will meet with members of the House and Senate to plead their case for governmental aid. Jackson earlier said that he met with former Enron chairman and chief executive Kenneth Lay for about 45 minutes and that Lay "was positive in the sense that he was concerned about severance (pay)." That meeting occurred a few hours after Lay's wife, Linda, appeared on the NBC "Today" program and said she and her husband are working to avoid personal bankruptcy. "Everything we had mostly was in Enron stock," Linda Lay said on NBC's "Today." "We've had long-term investments and those long-term investments have cash calls. Virtually -- other than the home we live in -- everything we own is for sale." Kenneth Lay resigned last week, saying the lawsuits and investigations into Enron's spectacular collapse were preventing him from properly running the company. Attorneys suing Lay and other executives claim he sold 1.8 million shares of Enron stock for $101 million from October 1998 to November 2001, though it's not clear how many of those sales were required under stock option rules. The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron and Andersen. Securities regulators and 11 congressional panels also have opened inquiries. oregonlive.com