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

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (2846)	12/27/2003 10:11:56 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 3602

Enron trials on deck for '04 16 defendants heading to court chicagotribune.com By Kristen Hays Associated Press December 27, 2003 HOUSTON -- First came Enron Corp.'s scandalous collapse. Then came the crackdowns. Now come the trials. The Enron saga has brought the infamous and the unknown to court in handcuffs as the Justice Department continues a multilayered probe into what brought down the high-flying energy company. The two top executives, former Chairman Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, had not been charged as the investigation passed the two-year mark. Both maintain their innocence of wrongdoing in the corporate implosion that cost thousands of workers their jobs, burned many investors and spawned dozens of lawsuits. Barring last-minute guilty pleas or lengthy postponements, 16 defendants, including former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, are scheduled for trial in 2004. "As much activity as there has been so far, it's really just a warm-up act to what we can expect in the coming year," said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who handles white-collar crime cases as an attorney in private practice. "The government will truly be put to the test in these upcoming trials, and we will see for the first time whether the government can successfully distill these incredibly complex frauds into cases jurors can understand," Mintz said. The first Enron defendant to face a jury is expected to be Lea Fastow, a one-time Enron executive and wife of the former finance chief. She is scheduled for trial Feb. 10, and the judge has already denied a defense request to move the trial. Lea Fastow, who quit as Enron's assistant treasurer in 1997, was indicted in April on six counts of conspiracy and filing false tax forms for allegedly participating in some of her husband's deals. Andrew Fastow is the highest-profile former Enron executive bound for trial, in April, though his lawyers plan to seek a postponement and are awaiting word on whether his case will be moved outside Texas. He faces 98 counts of conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, insider trading and other charges. He's accused of running a mini-kingdom of Byzantine financing methods and partnerships for years that funneled millions to him, his family and others and set the company on a collision course for failure. Andrew Fastow was indicted in October 2002, more than two months after his former top lieutenant, Michael Kopper, spilled all to prosecutors about alleged dirty deals in Enron's secretive finance group. His lawyers say he did what he was hired for, and his work was approved by Enron's top executives--Lay and Skilling--as well as the company's directors. Lea Fastow's lawyers say she was indicted to try to squeeze cooperation out of her husband. The last two scheduled trials so far will be in October. Seven former Enron Broadband executives were named in a 223-count indictment alleging overstatement of capabilities of the company's broadband unit, accounting fraud and efforts to hype broadband to analysts in 2001 to boost Enron's stock price. All pleaded innocent. John Forney, a former top trading executive at Enron, is scheduled for trial in San Francisco--so far the only trial scheduled outside of Houston, where Enron is based--on 11 counts of conspiracy and fraud. Besides Kopper, six people have struck plea deals--five former Enron executives and David Duncan, who was the top Enron auditor at nearly defunct accounting firm Andersen. All are cooperating with prosecutors in the coming trials and other investigations except former treasurer Ben Glisan, who began serving a five-year sentence in September after pleading guilty to conspiracy. Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune