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Impeach George Bush
Justice and Enron
A major Enron figure, former finance chief Andrew S. Fastow, is negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors that could send him to jail for 10 years.
Source: AP, 2004-01-07
Candidate: Enron
Three years after the Enron scandals were exposed and millions o investors lost billions of dollars, the Bush Justice Department is making a deal sweeter than most petty thieves get for stealing a car.
Enron's former top executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have not been charged, and attorneys have not said whether Fastow is willing to cooperate in prosecuting them.
Enron, of course, and its top executives have close ties with the Bush Administration. Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay holds the record for goods received for his contributions to the Bush campaigns for govenor and president. Not only has he not been prosecuted for the laws broken causing the implosion of Enron, but Enron itself hasn't been prosecuted for causing the implosion of the State of California due to the energy price fixing hot on the heels of Bush's election.
"Sometimes I liken Jeff Skilling to a Mafia boss who used particular words. He never said, 'Go whack Joey.' He said, 'Go take care of Joey.' And now that there have been corporate problems, he tries to say that 'I just meant, send Joey on vacation.'
"Andy's almost like the assassin who can now tell the government what his orders were or were not," Watkins told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, arrived at the Houston federal courthouse Thursday morning. Asked whether there would be any developments in the plea talks, Caldwell said: "We'll see."
Fastow would be the highest-ranking executive to plead guilty in the criminal investigation of Enron. The company's collapse into bankruptcy in late 2001 was the first in a series of scandals that rattled corporate America and shook investors' confidence in the stock market.
He allegedly masterminded a complex web of schemes that hid Enron's debt, inflated profits and allowed him to skim millions of dollars for himself, his family and selected friends and colleagues. Prosecutors say he reaped an estimated $30 million from the web of partnerships he set up. The Bush Justice Department only wants $20 back.
Fastow's plea talks were to continue Thursday, but a source familiar with the matter said a deal would be contingent upon whether a separate agreement also is reached for Fastow's wife, former Enron assistant treasurer Lea Fastow.
(Oh, this is rich) On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who is presiding over Lea Fastow's case, rejected a plea deal that would send her to prison for five months, saying it did not allow him sufficient leeway on her sentence.
Attorneys could still revise that deal, but in the meantime, more than 200 potential jurors were summoned to a courthouse Thursday to answer questionnaires in preparation for her trial, scheduled to begin Feb. 10.
Andrew Fastow - whose deal would include an agreement to pay at least $20 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission - could nix a plea agreement for himself if no deal is reached for his wife, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Security and Exchange Commission might use the money from Fastow to reimburse itself for the $148 million it gave to its former director Richard Grasso before he was forced to resign. The Millions that lost billions still won't be reimbursed.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt would have to approve a deal for Andrew Fastow, which had included a 10-year prison sentence, sources close to the case said. If attorneys and judges agree on a deal, the former executive could appear in court to change his plea to guilty as early as Thursday, the sources said.
Plea deals often involve agreements to testify against others, and the potential of a Fastow plea deal raises the possibility that prosecutors are closer to bringing a case against Lay and Skilling.
When Andrew Fastow was indicted in October 2002, his lawyers said Skilling and Lay approved his work. Skilling and Lay both maintain their innocence in Enron's demise.
Authorities also were preparing criminal charges against Enron's former chief accountant, Richard A. Causey, but backed off plans for him to surrender as early as Thursday, sources with knowledge of the matter told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Causey could surrender Friday instead, the sources said.
The exact nature of a complaint against Causey was not immediately clear.
Andrew Fastow, 42, is charged with fraud, money laundering, insider trading and other charges. He is free on $5 million bond pending trial scheduled for April. If convicted, the maximum penalties for the charges against him include 20 years in prison for money laundering, 10 years for securities fraud and five years each on the mail fraud and conspiracy charges.
Attorneys for the Fastows did not return calls seeking comment. The family's spokesman, Gordon Andrew, declined comment.
Lea Fastow, 42, is charged with six counts of conspiracy and filing false tax forms for allegedly participating in some of her husband's deals.
Causey, 43, was fired Feb. 14, 2002, after a board of directors report noted his failure to properly monitor a partnership that became a focal point of the fraud investigation. The partnership, called LJM, was devised by Andrew Fastow, and prosecutors say it was used to conduct sham transactions to fraudulently improve Enron's books and enrich Andrew Fastow and others.
His attorney, Reid Weingarten, did not return calls.
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User Originated Comments:
From: Linda
2004-07-08 22:59:17
7/8/04
well, they've got 'im. let's see how
long they can keep 'im.
so far, this
justice department has been amazingly inept - 0
for 6. mistrials, everyone.
From: jay in janesville: age 15
2004-01-09 00:00:00
it is ridiculous to think that someone in a
position of power like that can get away with so
little. if he is so shallow as to not accept his
gigantic management salary as it was, then he
should go to prison for a lot longer than he is.
a recent story in our newspaper informed me about
a woman who had been stealing money from the cash
register at her job. an indictable offense, no
doubt. however, she didn't work at enron, or
microsoft, she worked at the local officemax. the
maximum sentence is 10 years in prison; she's
likely to get it.
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