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

To: Ben Wa who wrote (1793)	2/23/2002 6:46:07 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

Thanks for posting this very interesting article... madcowprod.com <<...Even more amazing is that —with billions at stake—the very real possibility that Baxter might have been murdered has been completely ignored in the press...>> IMHO, The Justice Department and The FBI should be investigating the death of Cliff Baxter VERY AGGRESSIVELY --There are too many unexplained questions...Where's Columbo when we need him...? columbo-site.freeuk.com Seriously, I have a hunch that there is much more to the Baxter death than we know now...Its clear that Kenny Boy, Ossama Bin Skilling, and Andy lets plead the 5th (I mean Fastow) have a lot to hide....these top execs could have been put in a very difficult position if the former Vice Chairman of the company got immunity and really opened up in front of Congress or the SEC....Unfortunately, Mr. Baxter is no longer is with us and I have a hunch that he did not commit suicide. Its time for 'the Bob Woodwards' of this world to dig deep and try to get to the bottom of this scandal. The former top execs that ran Enron MUST be held accountable for their actions. regards, -Scott

To: Ben Wa who wrote (1793)	2/23/2002 7:02:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

Attorneys jockey for top job representing employees Judge says she will make the decision if lawyers can't agree by Monday By ROSANNA RUIZ The Houston Chronicle Feb. 23, 2002 Before lawyers can join forces to gang up on Enron, they first must determine who gets to be the big dog in the hunt. One of the big bones has already been won. By order of U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon, the University of California board of regents is the lead plaintiff in the securities-fraud lawsuits filed by various shareholders. It is represented by Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach. Now a second turf war is going on among the lawyers who want their clients to be lead plaintiff in the Enron employee-benefits lawsuits. It's not a small matter. Counsel for the lead plaintiff directs overall strategy and coordinates the process. It also earns the biggest fees, which run 33 to 40 percent of the take. Harmon said if the parties can't agree on a lead plaintiff proposal by Monday, she would make the choice. Whoever it is, she said, must coordinate with Lerach "which should relieve a substantial portion of the burden here." "Furthermore, the court believes that the role of lead counsel includes not only organizing the prosecution of the litigation, but also persuading other counsel to work together in the most efficient manner." Since the firms are working on a contingency-fee basis, the lead counsel must also be financially capable of paying much of the costs of the litigation. Terse filings by various attorneys illustrate their desire for the appointment. Houston lawyer Robin L. Harrison pointed out that "since the meltdown of Enron" he and his colleagues "have spent hundreds of hours speaking with current and former Enron employees both on the phone and in person. Hence, counsel has conducted a massive factual and legal investigation in this case that has and will enable them to provide effective assistance to their clients." The same firm also claims that other attorneys have "refused to consider reasonable offers to work with" them, though those attorneys have done "virtually nothing." Harrison spent much of the day Friday trying to reach agreement with other lawyers before Monday's deadline, said his colleague, Justin Campbell. Harrison has proposed the naming of two lead counsels and a lead counsel committee, composed of himself and four other lawyers. Objecting to that is Randy McClanahan, who represents a group of former Enron employees calling itself Severed Enron Employees Coalition. He says his clients should be one of the lead plaintiffs and that it should be someone closer to home rather than "attorneys from other parts of the country." There has been some grumbling about McClanahan's claim that in representing SEEC he has 500 or more individual clients. Other attorneys note that in a widely circulated Feb. 14 e-mail, SEEC's chairman, Rod Jordan, says "we have 525 plus supportive members, and only 62 signed up and verified members." Since then, Jordan said he's confirmed that he has 219 members who used to work for Enron. Jordan and McClanahan scoff at the notion that either has misrepresented the group's true size. Lonny Hoffman, an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston's Law Center, said McClanahan had simply spoken too soon about the group's membership. "I don't think there's an ethical breach here in the sense there's some line that's been crossed," Hoffman said. "If it can be shown that he actually did misrepresent the number to the court, but I don't think that's going on here." He said the quibbling highlights the gamesmanship among attorneys. "I think this reflects how important financially and strategically this is for the lawyers that you are seeing heated expressions," Hoffman said. "It's an incredibly lucrative position to find yourself as lead counsel."

To: Ben Wa who wrote (1793)	2/26/2002 12:02:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

O'Neill Supports Tough CEO Standards By Melissa Goldfine Mon Feb 25, 7:07 PM ET CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said on Monday that the duties of chief executives to shareholders and employees needed to be clearly defined with maximum punishment for corporate officers who intentionally mislead or defraud. O'Neill, himself a former CEO who is chairing a government panel looking at improving corporate standards following the collapse of energy trader Enron Corp. , has had harsh words on wrongdoing by highly-placed executives. "I think we need, first of all, very great clarity about what's required...And then I think when we have people that intentionally mislead or defraud shareholders and...employees, then we ought to punish them to the full extent of the law," he told CNBC cable network during a visit to Chicago. President Bush (news - web sites), the former governor of Texas where Enron was headquartered and a recipient of generous campaign donations from the failed energy trading giant, has been trying to distance his administration from the company. The collapse of Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, in the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history has wiped out thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in shareholder equity. Ten congressional committees are probing Enron's demise, along with the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites). "I think we can learn some lessons from Enron and I think one of the lessons we needed to learn is that I think we need to be clear with CEOs, that along with their responsibility goes a duty to share information with their shareholders and with their employees, and not leave it to regulators to figure out all of the possibilities that exist in financial transactions," O'Neill said. The Treasury secretary, who headed the world's largest aluminum producer, Alcoa Inc. , before joining the Bush cabinet, said when he was in the private sector it was clear to him where the boundaries of propriety lay. READY FOR RECOVERY During his one-day visit to Chicago, O'Neill also reiterated that the U.S. economy seems to be in the preliminary stage of recovering from a recession that began last March. "We do believe that there is quite a bit of evidence that we are in the early stages of an economic recovery period," O'Neill said at the beginning of a meeting with local business leaders at the world's second-largest futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He told CNBC that economic growth in the first quarter will be a "a multiple" of the fourth quarter's 0.2 percent gross domestic product growth. After lunch, the Treasury chief toured the CME's tumultuous open outcry trading pits, where traders shout buy and sell orders and gesticulate wildly to another. Traders shook hands with O'Neill between dealings, and CME officials highlighted the workings of the pit where Eurodollars, the most active futures contract in the world, are traded. O'Neill will speak to the Economic Club of Chicago.