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

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2572)	12/13/2002 5:58:45 PM
From: Rascal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3602

Gads!

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2572)	12/13/2002 7:59:57 PM
From: James Calladine	Respond to of 3602

Well, it is in the Great American Tradition of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse AFTER friends of the fox have eaten all the chickens. But, (the supposition is), soon there will be a new crop of chickens, so there should be somebody RELIABLE in charge..... And if you are going to have to do some fancy dancing about Harken when and if the distraction of foreign wars comes to an end, you would want a friend-of-the-family fox there to look after things, wouldn't you.....? Namaste! Jim Jim

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2572)	12/15/2002 4:31:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 3602

Enron probe expanding to telecom 13:53 EST Friday The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that federal prosecutors have expanded their investigation of former Enron Corp. President Jeffrey Skilling, focusing on the role he and other executives played in the company's unsuccessful broadband telecommunications business. Until now, the focus of federal investigations has been primarily on Enron's energy business and its off-balance-sheet partnerships, which involved the company's former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and several other financial executives. But the broadband probe is likely to take a closer look at Kenneth Rice, the executive who headed that unit and who was named in an early shareholders' lawsuit seeking to freeze millions of dollars that top Enron executives reaped by selling off large amounts of the company's stock shortly before its value plummeted. Rice topped the list, walking away with more than $70 million. Skilling and other Enron executives told shareholders in 2000 that the company's telecom venture would be worth $70 billion. Their touting of this business helped push Enron's stock price above $80 a share by mid-2000. But in 2001, the company shuttered its broadband unit and took a huge write-off for its losses, which helped propel Enron into bankruptcy. Investigators are probing Enron's sales and swaps of broadband capacity and its accounting of several broadband deals and ventures, as well as the timing of the stock sales by Skilling, Rice and other executives, The Wall Street Journal reported. © 2002 American City Business Journals Inc.

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (2572)	12/16/2002 4:11:16 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3602

Report: '97 Enron Tape Parallels Scandal 12/16/2002 13:51:56 EST Five years before Enron collapsed in a big accounting scandal, an executive joked at a party about making "a kazillion dollars" through something he humorously dubbed "hypothetical future value accounting," the Houston Chronicle reported Monday. Videotaped jokes by some former Enron executives at a January 1997 party bear ironic parallels to events that helped bring down the energy conglomerate, the newspaper said. The videotape, of a going-away party for former Enron President Rich Kinder, features nearly half an hour of absurd skits, songs and testimonials by executives and prominent citizens - including President Bush, the newspaper reported. Enron, which two years ago ranked No. 7 on the Fortune 500, declared bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001, haunted by shady accounting, hidden debt and inflated profits. Stock that had traded at $90 in August 2000 plummeted to pennies. Thousands of people were laid off. The Chronicle did not identify the source of the videotape. At the party, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush pleaded with Kinder: "Don't leave Texas. You're too good a man." And his father, former President Bush, told Kinder, "You have been fantastic to the Bush family. I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George." In one skit, former administrative executive Peggy Menchaca played the part of Kinder receiving a budget report from then-President Jeff Skilling, who played himself. When the pretend Kinder expressed doubt that Skilling could pull off 600 percent revenue growth for the coming year, Skilling described how it could be done. "We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting," Skilling joked as he read from a script. "If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line." Skilling abruptly resigned from Enron in August 2001 before news of its troubles surfaced, and has professed ignorance about much of what went on under his watch. Three Enron workers have pleaded guilty to charges ranging from fraud to false tax returns, and former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow has been indicted on 78 charges. On the tape, Richard Causey, the former chief accounting officer, referred jokingly to a practice that is frowned upon by securities regulators. "I've been on the job for a week managing earnings, and it's easier than I thought it would be," Causey said. "I can't even count fast enough with the earnings rolling in." siliconinvestor.com