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

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2438)	8/5/2002 2:05:25 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 3602

Hi Duke, I tried "bearing down" on the article but got stymied by the Password page. Please advise... -R.

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2438)	8/21/2002 8:33:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

Some think 'a racketeering charge' is coming... Kopper may not be enough Will financier's plea satisfy cries for action? By MARY FLOOD and BILL MURPHY Houston Chronicle Aug. 21, 2002, 12:36AM Legal experts were mixed Tuesday in their opinions on whether today's expected plea bargain of ex-Enron executive Michael Kopper will quell the mounting cry for Enron scalps. Some say the plea by Kopper, former managing director of Enron Global Finance, in federal court in Houston today will ease the pressure, but others think Kopper's not a big enough fish to keep politicians quiet. With a November election looming, that will take a charge against someone like former Chairman Ken Lay, ex-Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling or ex-Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, who seems the likely next target for prosecutors. The Enron Task Force of top prosecutors and FBI agents was formed in January and beefed up in June after obtaining a guilty verdict against company auditor Arthur Andersen. The task force has also secured a guilty plea from Andersen partner David Duncan, set to be sentenced in October, and filed charges against three British ex-bankers related to Enron deals. Several senators have called for charges against former Enron executives, and CNN Moneyline host Lou Dobbs has been running a graphic showing the number of days that have passed with no such indictments. Joel Androphy, a Houston white-collar criminal defense lawyer, said Kopper's plea agreement is a huge victory for prosecutors and will be seen as such in the court of public opinion. "It's a leap forward for the government," Androphy said. "Everyone above this guy has to be increasingly nervous. This gives the government a real heavy hammer to coerce cooperation from others. This person will be working for the government for many years." Androphy said he wasn't surprised at how long prosecutors are taking to build cases. This plea indicates they are going after top-level executives and are slowly moving up the food chain, Androphy said. Androphy said that if somebody pleads guilty to a conspiracy to commit money-laundering, that is significant. "I sense that a racketeering charge is coming," he added. Dan Hedges, a Houston lawyer and former U.S. attorney here, said the plea should take some undeserved political heat off the case. Prosecutors have five years to file charges, he said, and in such complex white-collar cases years are often needed. As an example, he cited the case against savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating. It was over 2 1/2 half years after his institution went bankrupt before a federal grand jury indicted Keating. "But at the same time this takes some heat off, it will speed up the process. Rather than having to dig up facts one at a time from a variety of sources, they have a quicker way to some information" through Kopper, Hedges said. Jacob S. Frenkel, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer and ex-federal prosecutor, said he thinks the critics will continue to complain. "I don't think Kopper is a big enough player in comparison to who has been arrested and accused in other corporate cases recently," he said. He said a prosecutor's viewpoint is different from a politician's. "I don't think this will really make a difference from the political perspective." The political heat had been so intense that many Enron figures have asked their criminal lawyers to keep quiet. But Mike Ramsey, a prominent Houston criminal defense lawyer on former Enron Chairman Ken Lay's legal team, said it's time for them to start speaking out. Ramsey said last week that some public response is essential to counter the demagoguery flowing from Washington. "There is so much political heat on this, the pipes are about to burst," he said. "At a time that calls for careful investigation, Washington wants scalps before the November congressional election." Ramsey said it was "un-American" for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to demand to know why Enron officials haven't been indicted, though the legal issues are stupefyingly complex and far from being unraveled. Ramsey said he has twice talked to an Enron task force prosecutor in Houston to explain his client's position on some issues. He said the task force lawyers and agents seem reasonable, but political pressure could soon make them unreasonable. The prosecutors have vowed to keep politics out of their decisions and say they've felt no pressure. But defense attorneys who talk to the prosecutors say some have acknowledged that politics adds a layer of stress to their work. Doug Durham, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said prosecutors are not immune to political pressure. "Obviously, there is political pressure. The president has made it clear that he wants to make white-collar criminals responsible," he said. "The Justice Department is under pressure to make people accountable." But Phil Hilder, another former federal prosecutor and lawyer for Enron vice president Sherron Watkins, author of a famous memo that predicted the company's downfall, said the lead Enron prosecutors are not the type to be susceptible. "These prosecutors are all career prosecutors, and they are not going to bow to political pressure," he said. "They aren't going to do anything they don't feel right in their hearts about." chron.com