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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (31669)	10/23/2004 10:23:49 PM
From: Selectric II	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 173976

You appear to be remarkably uninformed. It's official: Fastows go to jail By Greg Farrell, USA TODAY Former Enron (ENRNQ) executives Andrew and Lea Fastow Wednesday agreed to go to jail, a development that turns a pivotal player in the energy firm's accounting scandal into a prosecution witness. Andrew Fastow arrives at the federal courthouse in Houston with one of his attorneys. By David J. Phillip, AP After a week of wavering over whether to accept a plea agreement from the Enron Task Force, the Fastows signed a deal that requires Andrew Fastow — the company's former chief financial officer — to help prosecutors as they try to build cases against former Enron chairman Ken Lay and former CEO Jeff Skilling. In two years, the Enron Task Force has brought charges against 26 people, 19 of them former Enron executives. Counting the Fastows, it has won convictions against seven people and former Enron auditor Arthur Andersen. Fastow's guilty plea is "very significant because he's the first Enron executive who sat on the 50th floor who's agreed to cooperate with us," says Leslie Caldwell, head of the Enron Task Force, referring to Enron's senior executive suite. "He's going to give us a window into what happened on the 50th floor." A few years ago, Enron was a highflying energy trading company that had transformed itself from a sleepy gas pipeline outfit into a powerhouse in energy markets. According to its financial statements, it was the USA's seventh-largest company, with a market capitalization of more than $60 billion. But in October 2001, the company said it had lost more than $500 million. Later, it admitted that its earnings had been inflated through multiple transactions with investment partnerships that Fastow controlled. The next month, it announced that previous years' financial statements were unreliable. Its share price plummeted and a planned merger with Dynegy fell through. In December 2001, Enron sought bankruptcy-court protection. According to his plea agreement, Fastow will serve 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. His wife, a former Enron assistant treasurer who pleaded guilty to filing a false joint income tax return, will serve at least five months. They also agreed to forfeit more than $29 million. The pair wanted to avoid the possibility that both might be in jail, and away from their two young boys, for an extended period. "The defendants are able to receive sentences that are far below what they would ever receive if they went to trial and lost, and the government is able to proceed to a conclusion of the Enron case much quicker," says Houston lawyer Philip Hilder, a former federal prosecutor. Skilling's attorney, Bruce Hiler, says, "We understand why people would want to enter pleas, but it doesn't change the truth. We think if objectivity wins out, there is no case against our client."