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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard S who wrote (457091)	9/11/2003 2:38:00 PM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I see I made you slip right back into the propaganda sewer right away. The Rubinites just can't make the argument. It immediately goes right back into Marxian class-hate...

To: Richard S who wrote (457091)	9/11/2003 3:15:16 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

What.......so he and his administration could do more of the wink and nod to fraud? It is too bad that we could not have had Clinton for another 4 years M Former Enron exec first to admit to fraud A former Enron treasurer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to commit fraud, providing the first public admission by a former executive that certain transactions at the heart of the scandal that crippled the company were used to manipulate its financial statements. The plea, by Ben Glisan Jr., 37, established that a series of complex transactions known as the Raptors had been knowingly constructed in ways that violated accounting rules and allowed the company to exaggerate its earnings performance. All told, the Raptors were used to manipulate Enron’s reported income by as much as $1 billion, government securities regulators said on Wednesday. But, until Wednesday, no former executive had admitted that the Raptors were knowingly put together in violation of the rules on financial reporting. “Beginning in the spring of 2000, I and others at Enron engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate artificially Enron’s financial statements,” Glisan said in Federal District Court in Houston. He added that he had helped structure “illegal transactions” that allowed Enron to remove troubling assets from its books. After entering his plea, Glisan was immediately sentenced to five years in prison -- a fairly long sentence compared with those given in many white-collar convictions that result from pleas. With that, Glisan became the first former Enron executive to be sentenced to prison. However, while Glisan entered his plea as part of an agreement with the government, he is not cooperating in the continuing investigation of Enron as part of that deal, prosecutors said. “We have witnesses and Mr. Glisan is not currently one of them,” said Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s Enron task force. “He was never cooperating, and we never expected him to cooperate.” As a result, Glisan is not a crucial part of the government’s criminal case against Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former chief financial officer, who was a strong advocate of Glisan at the company and played the central role of having him promoted in 2000 to the treasurer’s post at a young age. He is also unlikely to play a significant role in other criminal investigations of activities at the company. Hank Schuelke, a lawyer for Glisan, did not return a phone call on Wednesday. He declined to comment to reporters after the hearing in Houston. Glisan has the option of cooperating with the government later, like testifying at trial, and under the federal rules could then apply to receive a reduction of his sentence. However, because his plea also ends the possibility that he could be charged with other criminal violations, he will not be able to invoke his right against self-incrimination, meaning that he can be compelled to testify, either by a government agency or another defendant. In addition to the prison term, Glisan will have to surrender $938,000 that prosecutors say he obtained improperly, and he also promised not to seek a refund of $412,000 in taxes that he paid on that money. Glisan, who at one point was one of Enron’s most prominent young executives with the promise of millions of dollars in his future, was said by people who know him to be effectively out of money, with little hope of holding on to the amounts he has left -- particularly now that his admissions can be used against him by lawyers for former Enron shareholders. NYT abs-cbnnews.com