Crack a rimborso lento

[FaGal]

8 luglio 2005

Crack a rimborso lento

Usa: da Enron a Worldcom, risarcimenti irrisori


NEW YORK • Prima gli scandali aziendali hanno truffato e impoverito i risparmiatori. Adesso anche i rimborsi promessi dalle autorità federali potrebbero trasformarsi in una beffa. La Sec, dietro ordine del Congresso, ha fatto propria la missione di versare direttamente agli investitori i fondi rastrellati con le multe, invece di incanarli verso le casse del Dipartimento del Tesoro. In tre anni le autorità mobiliari hanno imposto alla Corporate America ( da WorldCom a Enron fino alle banche) esborsi da 5,5 miliardi di dollari destinati a gonfiare un nuovo programma di risarcimenti battezzato " Fair Funds". Ma il « Wall Street Journal » rivela che questo denaro si è finora trasformato in un rivolo nelle tasche dei cittadini: 82 milioni di dollari, equivalenti a soli due centesimi per ciascun dollaro strappato.
Le autorità denunciano una semi paralisi provocata da ostacoli burocratici e legali sorti nel dare la caccia agli investitori danneggiati e nel passare al setaccio la documentazione relativa ai singoli casi. Anzitutto, infatti, viene prescritto ogni sforzo possibile per individuare i truffati, al contrario delle class action per danni dove sono i risparmiatori a doversi fare avanti. In un paese con la mobilità degli Stati Uniti già questo è una sorta di " missione impossibile". Ogni richiesta di risarcimento, poi, deve essere vagliata attentamente sia per accertarne la validità che per stabilire la cifra cui ciascun investitore ha diritto.
Risultato: in alcuni scandali di alto profilo, quali Enron, Qwest e Xerox, mancano ancora piani per i rimborsi. E il caso WorldCom, che ha invece dato i natali a un grande fondo, dimostra gli ostacoli sulla strada dei risarcimenti: dal quartier generale stabilito nella cittadina di Syracuse, a nord di New York, una cinquantina di funzionari sono da tempo impegnati a contattare milioni di investitori, ovvero tutti coloro che sono rimasti bruciati da almeno una delle decine di titoli emessi dall'ex colosso delle tlc. Nel frattempo il fondo aiuta altri: tra i compensi dorati generati dalla sua gestione ci sono gli 800 dollari l'ora pagati a un ex presidente della Sec nei panni di consulente e i 20mila dollari finora intascati da un altro ex commissario dell'organismo di vigilanza.
http://www.assinews.it/rassegna/arti...080705ba3.html

[FaGal]

Con la condanna a 5 anni di carcere per Scott Sullivan, ...

Con la condanna a 5 anni di carcere per Scott Sullivan, l’«architetto della frode», si è chiuso il processo Worldcom, la più grande truffa di Wall Street (11 miliardi di dollari). In tutto il giudice ha comminato 32 anni e 5 mesi, 25 anni solo all’ex ceo Bernard Ebbers

[FaGal]

Scandali, è scontro per i risarcimenti
Banche contro assicurazioni
http://www.assinews.it/rassegna/arti...le271205ba.pdf

[FaGal]

IL CRAC USA
Enron: processo al decollo
Si tenta nuovamente la via del patteggiamento nella vicenda giudiziaria sul crac finanziario del colosso energetico texano Enron. Il pool di procuratori federali che segue il caso ha riavviato le trattative con l'ex direttore della contabilità della compagnia energetica, Rick Causey. È quanto pubblica il quotidiano Houston Chronicle . Il processo comincerà il prossimo 17 gennaio a Houston e Causey è uno dei principali imputati. corriere

[FaGal]

IL PERSONAGGIO L’America non trova giurati per il processo Enron dal nostro inviato MASSIMO GAGGI
il Crac del Secolo
NEW YORK - Quattro anni fa, nei giorni del crollo della Enron - il gigante dell'energia arrivato a valere 68 miliardi di dollari prima della bancarotta del dicembre 2001 che ne ha totalmente distrutto il valore - Jeff Skilling, l'amministratore delegato che si era inspiegabilmente dimesso pochi mesi prima, girava per Houston perennemente ubriaco. Andava a caccia dei suoi ex colleghi e li sfidava a dichiarare in pubblico di credere nella sua innocenza. Una volta aggredì addirittura i clienti di un bar, accusandoli di essere agenti dell'Fbi che erano lì per spiarlo.
Quello che si presenterà domattina davanti al tribunale di Houston per rispondere di ben 35 capi di imputazione nel processo sul più grave scandalo della storia finanziaria americana è un uomo molto diverso.
Skilling non beve più un goccio d'alcol e da un anno e mezzo lavora giorno e notte per costruire la sua difesa. Ha reclutato Daniel Petrocelli, celebre avvocato di Los Angeles (con scarsa esperienza in casi di questo tipo) che ha costruito per lui a Houston un ufficio legale con dieci assistenti.
Insieme a Skilling - che rischia parecchie decine di anni di carcere e che ha già speso 22 milioni di dollari per costruire la sua difesa - sul banco degli imputati ci sarà Ken Lay, presidente e amministratore delegato di lungo corso della società. Negli anni del "boom" della Enron, Lay era il grande benefattore di Houston.
L'uomo più amato della città divenne improvvisamente il più odiato quando la bancarotta distrusse i risparmi di un gran numero di investitori e lasciò settemila persone senza lavoro e molte altre senza pensione. Lay si è sempre dichiarato innocente e lo ha fatto anche alla vigilia del processo. In genere gli imputati evitano di esporsi per non irritare i loro giudici. Lay, invece, un mese fa ha tenuto un discorso pubblico ribadendo di essere innocente e accusando la magistratura di interpretare come crimini tecniche finanziarie magari spregiudicate, ma legittime che alla fine degli anni '90 erano utilizzate da molti gruppi.
Il terzo protagonista di questo drammatico processo sarà Andrew Fastow.
L'ex direttore finanziario della Enron è sicuramente il «cattivo» (o, quantomeno, il più cattivo) di questa storia: accusato di aver materialmente e ripetutamente truccato i bilanci, di aver pompato miliardi di dollari fuori dalla società, di essersi personalmente appropriato di una parte di questo denaro, Fastow ha già patteggiato dichiarandosi colpevole di alcuni dei 98 capi di imputazione che gli erano stati contestati.
Grazie a questo accordo passerà in prigione «solo» dieci anni e parteciperà al processo non come imputato ma come testimone: il «cattivo» della storia diventa, insomma, grande accusatore, secondo il pragmatico meccanismo del processo americano che punta molto sul patteggiamento per evitare gli enormi costi e i tempi lunghi dei processi. In questo stesso procedimento contro i vertici della Enron - un'istruttoria condotta da dieci magistrati e ufficiali dell'Fbi impiegati a tempo pieno che hanno messo agli atti 200 milioni di pagine di documenti - diciassette dirigenti della società si sono già dichiarati colpevoli e hanno patteggiato la pena. Ultimo in ordine di tempo, il capo dei contabili Rick Causey.
Aveva deciso di andare fino in fondo con Lay e Skilling, ma alla vigilia di Natale ha ceduto: farà 7 anni di carcere.
Ma proprio il moltiplicarsi dei patteggiamenti, insieme alla difficoltà di dimostrare reati tecnicamente molto complessi e di giudicare personaggi già ampiamente condannati dalla stampa e dall'opinione pubblica, ha fatto sì che finora non sia stato pronunciato alcun giudizio definitivo sul più grande scandalo finanziario della storia americana: quello che è all'origine della riforma delle regole contabili contenuto nella legge Sarbanes-Oxley e di altre riforme analoghe adottate da molti altri Paesi (ultima l'Italia, lo scorso dicembre).
Il grande processo di Houston che inizia oggi con la selezione dei dodici membri della giuria è stato preceduto da altri tre procedimenti su alcuni episodi specifici che hanno avuto per protagonista la Enron. Solo in un caso - quello delle centrali elettriche galleggianti in Nigeria - si è arrivati ad una condanna netta. Nel processo contro la Arthur Andersen, la società che avrebbe dovuto controllare i conti della Enron a tutela dei risparmiatori, la condanna in primo grado è stata annullata dalla Corte Suprema per un problema procedurale. Nella causa sugli investimenti della Enron nelle telecomunicazioni a banda larga, l'accusa si è persa nella descrizione di operazioni finanziarie di incredibile complessità e non è riuscita a convincere i giurati che, nel prendere certe decisioni, i responsabili finanziari della Enron erano consapevoli di commettere reati.
Per evitare il ripetersi di questo copione, a Houston la pubblica accusa ha cambiato strategia: anziché analizzare le singole decisioni, cercherà di dimostrare che Lay e Skilling hanno mentito agli organi della società e ai risparmiatori perché, anche quando erano ormai consapevoli delle condizioni pre-fallimentari della Enron, hanno continuato a presentarla in pubblico come un ottimo investimento.
Insomma, un processo di grande interesse per le sue implicazioni e la personalità dei manager coinvolti, ma anche un test per il sistema giudiziario americano, con l'accusa alle prese con reati gravi, ma oggettivamente difficili da dimostrare e la difesa che teme di non avere un giudizio imparziale: l'80% dei candidati selezionati come possibili giurati ha infatti dichiarato nei colloqui preventivi di rito di essere già convinto della colpevolezza di Lay e Skilling. Un pregiudizio così diffuso ha spinto gli avvocati degli imputati a chiedere lo spostamento del processo in un altro Stato. La richiesta è stata respinta e quindi già domani quella della selezione della giuria sarà una battaglia.
corriere

[FaGal]

January 29, 2006
10 Enron Players: Where They Landed After the Fall
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

KENNETH L. LAY and his second in command, Jeffrey K. Skilling, were the public faces of Enron, painting a rosy picture of strong profits and healthy businesses. But as the facts began to tumble out, in the fall of 2001, the company swiftly collapsed, taking with it the fortunes and retirement savings of thousands of employees.

Tomorrow is the first day of the trial of Mr. Lay, who as founder and chairman is accused of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, and Mr. Skilling, his chief executive, who faces dozens of counts, including fraud, conspiracy and insider trading.

While they are probably the best known of the Enron characters, there were many others who played supporting roles. Some have admitted to helping artificially increase profits and hide losses and debts. Others tried to blow the whistle on the deceptions.

Some have moved on to other jobs and new chapters in their lives, while others continue to spend their days mired in their legal fights.

Here are 10 of the major figures and where they are now.


Andrew S. Fastow
The Finance Chief
Who Turned to Fraud


Andrew S. Fastow, Enron's chief financial officer, avoided the spotlight, leaving that to Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling.

But Mr. Fastow, who was one of Mr. Skilling's first hires at Enron in 1990, proved his importance to the company in another way: he raised the huge amounts of capital that Enron needed as it moved beyond its roots in the natural gas business to blaze trails as an innovative energy powerhouse.

At the same time, as Mr. Fastow acknowledged in his guilty plea two years ago, he also worked with other senior officers to disguise Enron's deteriorating finances. Specifically, he helped to set up complex off-the-books partnerships that Enron used to avoid disclosing losses. He also used the partnerships, he admitted, to defraud Enron of millions of dollars for his own benefit.

His wife, Lea, a former assistant treasurer at Enron, was also ensnared in the fraud. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor tax offense in 2004 for failing to report some gains earned from Mr. Fastow's accounting fraud.

As part of his plea, Mr. Fastow, who is now 44, faces 10 years in prison and is cooperating with federal prosecutors. He could be the first major witness at the trial of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling.

Mr. Fastow and his wife still live in Houston with their two sons. The names of two of the partnerships that Mr. Fastow set up — LJM1 and LJM2 — were the initials of his wife and their sons, Jeffrey and Matthew.
PHYLLIS MESSINGER


Ben F. Glisan Jr.
From the Inner Circle
To a Jail Cell


Ben F. Glisan Jr. joined Enron in 1996 after a brief stint at Arthur Andersen, where he worked primarily on the Enron account. He became part of the inner circle and helped conceive and execute several financing schemes that hid company losses.

Mr. Glisan was appointed corporate treasurer in 2000, a move that Sherron S. Watkins, a former Enron vice president, later described to Congress as "effectively letting the foxes in the henhouse."

Mr. Glisan and Mr. Fastow were among four senior Enron executives who secretly invested in a partnership known as Southampton Place. Mr. Glisan invested $5,800, which returned close to $1 million in a matter of weeks. He later forfeited all of it.

Originally indicted on more than 24 charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering, Mr. Glisan pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. He is serving a five-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in Beaumont, Tex.

Although Mr. Glisan's plea carried no obligation to cooperate with government investigators, he testified in 2004 for the prosecution in a criminal case against four former investment bankers at Merrill Lynch and two former Enron executives.

They were charged with conspiring to allow Enron to prop up its profits in late 1999 through a fraudulent sale of some Nigerian electricity barges to Merrill. One former Enron employee was convicted along with the four Merrill executives. Mr. Glisan is on the prosecution's list of potential witnesses in the trial of Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay.

Mr. Glisan grew up and still has a home in Clear Lake, Tex., 30 minutes south of Houston. He received a bachelor's degree and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin. He is married and has two school-age children.
KATE MURPHY


Mark E. Koenig
The Conference Call
That Raised Eyebrows


It was an infamous conference call, and Mark E. Koenig had allowed it to happen on his watch. On that day in April 2001, Mr. Koenig, then the director of investor relations at Enron, was managing a call between Enron's executives and Wall Street analysts. Mr. Skilling began by laying out Enron's performance in the first quarter. The company was reporting $425 million in earnings, he said, another banner quarter.

But the call turned tense during an exchange between Mr. Skilling and a hedge fund representative. Mr. Skilling ended the verbal joust by describing, on an open line, the hedge fund man in profane language. (Transcripts of the call can still be found on the Internet.) Something must be awry if Enron's chief executive acted so erratically, Wall Street surmised, and Mr. Koenig, a longtime Enron veteran, had not been able to forestall it.

Mr. Koenig, now 50, joined Enron in 1985. Although he stayed at the company until spring 2002, past its bankruptcy filing in December 2001, prosecutors say he participated in and knew about efforts to mislead investors into thinking that the company was financially healthy.

By August 2004, Mr. Koenig pleaded guilty to a count of aiding and abetting securities fraud, a charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He also settled separate civil charges, paying almost $1.5 million in fines and forfeitures. More important, as he awaits sentencing, Mr. Koenig agreed to cooperate in the case against his former bosses.

This month, Mr. Koenig, who still lives in Houston, made a small change to his plea deal, asserting that it was actually Mr. Skilling, not him, who told analysts in July 2001 that a unit was reorganized for efficiency reasons when, in fact, it was done to conceal losses. Still, Mr. Koenig acknowledged that he had conveyed the same misleading information, as well as other deceptions, to analysts during that turbulent year.
SIMON ROMERO


Lou Lung Pai
A Big Stock Seller,
With a Taste for Glitter


Lou Lung Pai headed several divisions at Enron, including Enron Energy Services, which sold contracts to provide natural gas and electricity to companies for long periods. Born in Nanjing, China, he emigrated with his parents to the United States when he was 2. He earned a master's degree in economics at the University of Maryland and worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission before joining Enron in 1986.

Regarded by colleagues as prickly, Mr. Pai (pronounced "pie") was also known for running up large bills on the company expense account at strip clubs. His affair with an exotic dancer ended his marriage in 1999, and he sold most of his Enron shares to settle the divorce. Mr. Pai's take, more than $271 million, is the largest of any former Enron employee and has made him the target of several shareholder lawsuits.

Mr. Pai, who resigned from the company six months before it filed for bankruptcy protection, has been questioned by federal prosecutors and S.E.C. investigators but has not been charged with wrongdoing. Through his lawyers, he has said he was not involved in promoting Enron stock and denies knowledge of any illegal, off-the-books accounting. His name appears on a list of potential witnesses for the defense in the trial of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling.

Mr. Pai married the woman with whom he had the affair, and they live with their daughter in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, where they also have a stable for breeding and training dressage horses. Until he sold it last year, Mr. Pai owned a 77,500-acre ranch in southern Colorado, which was the subject of several lawsuits over access and grazing rights.
KATE MURPHY


Kenneth D. Rice
Consummate Salesman
From the Broadband Unit


Kenneth D. Rice held several posts during his 20-year career at Enron, including chief executive of its high-speed Internet unit. Raised on a farm in Broken Bow, Neb., Mr. Rice earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska and an M.B.A. from Creighton University in Omaha.

With his boyish good looks and rakish ways, he was known as a consummate salesman. Mr. Rice raced Ferraris and motorcycles and was a favorite of Mr. Skilling, accompanying him on trips to Patagonia, the Australian Outback and Baja, Mexico.

He was indicted in 2003 on more than 40 charges, including fraud and conspiracy. He and other executives in Enron's broadband division were accused of making misleading statements about the capabilities of the technology and the performance of their division, resulting in an artificial inflation in the value of Enron stock. Mr. Rice then sold the stock at those high prices, the indictment said; he sold 1.2 million shares for more than $76 million. Mr. Rice pleaded guilty in 2004 to one count of securities fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. The other charges were dropped. The length of his jail term will depend on how helpful he is to government investigators.

He testified at a trial last year against co-workers accused of fraud at Enron's broadband unit. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, and the case is to be retried in September.

Mr. Rice is also expected to testify against Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling. Moreover, Mr. Rice is a defendant in several shareholder lawsuits. With his plea, he agreed to forfeit a vacation home in Telluride, Colo., cars, cash and other property totaling $13.7 million.

He lives in Bellaire, a Houston suburb, with his wife, a pediatrician who was his high school sweetheart. They have four school-age children.
KATE MURPHY


Greg Whalley
Fostering Some Fun
On the Trading Floor


Greg Whalley, Enron's former president, once created a hypothetical futures contract for Popsicles.

After cornering the market from his fellow Enron traders, he arranged for a truckload of real Popsicles to be delivered to the trading floor as "payment" for his fellow traders. The truck broke down along the way, but the Popsicles arrived intact.

The Popsicles were just one way that Mr. Whalley, a former tank captain in the Army, loosened up his fellow traders and became a popular figure within Enron's burgeoning energy trading operation. Brash but fun-loving, Mr. Whalley was a fast-rising star. He joined the company in 1992 as a new graduate of Stanford's business school and rose to the top of the wholesale trading division.

In August 2001, after Mr. Skilling left the company, Mr. Lay tapped Mr. Whalley to be the company's president. Weeks later, after he realized the depth of Enron's financial woes, Mr. Whalley fired Mr. Fastow without even waiting for formal approval from the company's board.

Mr. Whalley, 43, did not return phone calls or e-mail messages seeking comment.

Since Enron's collapse, Mr. Whalley has been questioned by federal investigators and sued by investors. He has cooperated with investigators, but the legal cloud over him led a Swiss bank, UBS, to let him go shortly after it acquired Enron's trading operation in 2002.

He later landed at Centaurus Energy, the Houston hedge fund founded by John Arnold, who worked under Mr. Whalley at Enron as a natural gas trader. At Centaurus, he is in charge of developing new trading strategies, said one former Enron manager in the trading operation.
ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO


Nancy Temple
An Andersen Lawyer
And Troubling Memos


Nancy Temple must have been an almost irresistible hire to Arthur Andersen. At the time she joined the firm in 2000, it was still dealing with a federal investigation of its audit work for Waste Management. And Ms. Temple, a Harvard Law School graduate and a law partner in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, was a litigator who specialized in issues like accounting liability.

The Waste Management investigation led to a $7 million fine against Andersen in 2001, at the time the biggest penalty ever imposed on an accounting firm.

But it was the accounting firm's relationship with Enron that proved far more costly. Early in 2002, shortly after the energy company collapsed, prosecutors charged Andersen with obstruction of justice for destroying documents related to its audit work for Enron.

The jury hearing the criminal case against Andersen focused on advice that Ms. Temple, 41, gave to David B. Duncan, Andersen's lead partner on the Enron account, in October 2001. The jurors concluded that she had improperly advised that references to Andersen's concerns about Enron's accounting be removed from a memorandum.

Earlier in the case, prosecutors focused on another e-mail message that Ms. Temple sent to Andersen employees that October, this one about the firm's "document retention" policy. Prosecutors contended that the message was a subtle signal to the staff to destroy Enron-related files. Jurors said after the trial that the shredding had not been a major factor in their decision.

Ms. Temple's lawyer, Mark C. Hansen of Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evans & Figel in Washington, declined to comment on his client. Ms. Temple, who is married and has an infant son, continues to practice law in Chicago.
JONATHAN D. GLATER


Rebecca Mark
A Global Ambassador,
Now Off the Fast Track


Globe-trotting in stiletto heels and a miniskirt, Rebecca Mark was Enron's flashy ambassador abroad. A media darling in the late 1990's, she ran various international business development divisions within the company.

Originally from a small town in Missouri, Ms. Mark was twice listed on Fortune's annual index of the 50 most powerful women in business and was widely reported to have been a rival of Mr. Skilling's to be named chief executive. But she later became the subject of scorn because of bad bets, like a $3 billion investment in a power plant in India, which provoked accusations that Enron had negotiated an unfair deal with the local government.

Ms. Mark was forced to resign in August 2000 when she was chief executive of Azurix, a fledgling and financially shaky Enron water subsidiary. She sold her shares in Enron shortly after she left, receiving $82.5 million.

Last year, Ms. Mark agreed to pay $5.2 million, which was her share of a $13 million settlement with Enron shareholders, although a judge earlier found no impropriety in the millions from her Enron stock sales.

She cooperated with a Senate committee that investigated Enron improprieties in international deals and it is generally thought that she will be a witness in the trial of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling. But she is not on the government's current witness list, and her lawyer says she has not been subpoenaed.

Now known as Rebecca Mark-Jusbasche, she divides her time between homes in Houston and Telluride, Colo., as well as a ranch near Taos, N.M. She is married to Michael Jusbasche, a businessman who was born in Bolivia.
KATE MURPHY


Sherron S. Watkins
The Whistle-Blower
From the Neighborhood


Sherron S. Watkins is remembered for the letter she wrote as a company vice president in August 2001 to Mr. Lay, describing improper accounting practices at Enron. Months later, Enron collapsed. Ms. Watkins's prescient letter, made public in the Congressional investigation into the company's collapse, brought her fame as a corporate whistle-blower.

Ms. Watkins still lives in Southampton, a fashionable Houston neighborhood, not far from the home of Mr. Fastow. Michael J. Kopper, a former confidant of Mr. Fastow at Enron, used to live in the same area.

She has since written a book with Mimi Swartz, a Houston journalist, about Enron's fall, and formed a consulting practice, Sherron Watkins & Company, which advises companies on governance issues. Ms. Watkins also delivers lectures around the country, including one recent talk at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in which she called for an overhaul of corporate ethics rules and enforcement in the United States.

Such recognition might have seemed unlikely for someone who grew up modestly in Tomball, a rural town now on the margins of Houston's sprawl, before attending the University of Texas, Austin, and working as an accountant at Arthur Andersen. In responding to a request for an interview, Ms. Watkins, who is on the witness list for the trial of Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay, said her lawyer had advised her not to speak with reporters at this time.
SIMON ROMERO


Vincent J. Kaminski
Sounding the Alarm
But Unable to Prevail



For months before Enron's demise, Vincent J. Kaminski warned superiors that the off-the-books partnerships and side deals engineered by Mr. Fastow were unethical and could bring down the company. As Enron's managing director for research, Mr. Kaminski was responsible for quantitative modeling to assist the energy traders and other parts of the business.

Mr. Kaminski's disgust with Mr. Fastow's deals eventually exploded into an internal war with Enron's global finance department in the fall of 2001. As his anger mounted, he refused to sign off on documents related to the partnerships known as the Raptors that Mr. Fastow had created, and he instructed his team of internal Enron consultants to refuse to do any work for the finance department.

His efforts fell on deaf ears. Earlier, in March 2001, he went to Mr. Glisan, the company's treasurer, and presented a report from a midlevel analyst saying that Mr. Fastow's deals had created a threat to Enron's survival, in part because of stock price "triggers" that would require bank loans to be repaid if Enron's credit rating was downgraded and the stock price fell.

Mr. Kaminski, who was born in Poland, trained as an economist and has a business degree, stayed at Enron until early 2002. Afterward, he found many companies eager to hire him. He remained in the energy industry, working first at the Citadel Investment Group, a hedge fund based in Chicago, and later at Sempra Energy and Reliant Energy.

Last March, Mr. Kaminski, 57, landed at Citigroup, where he conducts quantitative modeling for the bank's trading operation based in Houston. He also teaches at the business school of Rice University and has been a contributing writer and editor of books on energy risk management and energy trading.

Mr. Kaminski is well known in the energy industry for his loyalty to the brainy minds he often recruited from top universities worldwide. As Enron was collapsing, Mr. Kaminski helped all 50 of his former research staff members find jobs elsewhere.
ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

[FaGal]

January 29, 2006
Who Will Steal the Enron Show?
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
HOUSTON

FOR nearly a decade, Paula H. Rieker methodically worked her way up the ladder at Enron's investor relations department, and early in 2000 she was promoted to the department's No. 2 post. At the time, Enron was flying high: this formerly sleepy pipeline company, led by its founder, Kenneth L. Lay, and a rising star executive, Jeffrey K. Skilling, had transformed itself into an energy-trading powerhouse with profits that put competitors to shame.

By October 2001, however, it was becoming clearer to the outside world that Enron was in trouble, and that its apparently unbelievable success might have been just that. Revelations about little-understood transactions engineered by the company's chief financial officer, Andrew S. Fastow, were pummeling Enron's stock and raising concerns among its creditors.

Ms. Rieker, in a new post as the corporate secretary, hastily organized a series of board meetings and late-night conference calls to deal with the crisis. On one of those calls, prosecutors say, Mr. Lay lied about the true reason for a $1.2 billion equity reduction and made other misrepresentations.

A day later, Ms. Rieker boarded an Enron plane with Mr. Lay and other senior executives and flew to New York for meetings with analysts and big investors. During the meetings, the analysts pressed Mr. Lay about the true health of the company and, prosecutors say, he continued to mislead them.

The discussions that Ms. Rieker witnessed during that month in Enron's collapse could be important in determining whether Mr. Lay goes to prison. While Mr. Fastow has drawn attention as the prosecution's potential star witness in the trial of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling, which is set to begin tomorrow in federal court here, lesser-known figures like Ms. Rieker and her boss in investor relations, Mark E. Koenig, may turn out to play a much more crucial role. Mr. Koenig may lead off the government's case, said one lawyer in the trial.

Mr. Skilling is charged with 31 counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading. Mr. Lay is charged with seven counts of conspiracy and fraud. They have both pleaded not guilty to all charges, setting the stage for one of the biggest corporate corruption trials in decades.

How will the trial play out? While there are almost always unforeseen twists and turns in a lengthy criminal trial, a review of the most important witnesses summoned to appear at the trial offers some suggestion of how the government may present its case and how the defendants may try to rebut it.

Prosecutors will use a variety of witnesses in an effort to weave a story for jurors about how Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling, in their zeal to make Enron appear to be a profit powerhouse, twisted accounting rules and otherwise cooked Enron's books, and then repeatedly lied and misrepresented the company's financial situation to investors.

The government will focus on people who raised red flags about Enron's businesses and on witnesses who were privy to what Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling said when they spoke to investors. The defense will counter with a legion of lawyers and accountants who will testify that they themselves had approved Enron's byzantine accounting maneuvers and that any fraud that did occur did not reach the top of the company.

As character witnesses, Mr. Lay's lead attorney is prepared to call many former Enron employees and Texas business luminaries, including a former secretary of commerce and the owner of Houston's baseball team. They will try to persuade jurors that Mr. Lay was simply too good a man to be caught up in fraud at Enron.

Did the government learn a lesson from last year's Enron broadband case, which ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict? Recently, the government has indicated that its strategy for this, the most important of Enron trials, is that less is more. The Enron Task Force of the Justice Department has culled its witness list in the last month to 62 from 79, removing many people who would have testified about technical accounting issues, after Richard Causey, Enron's former chief accounting officer, pleaded guilty in December and agreed to cooperate with the government. That will reduce the amount of accounting arcana that prosecutors will have to present in the case and will let them focus on much clearer questions: What did Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling know, and when did they know it?

Yet even with fewer witnesses and the apparent effort to streamline their case, prosecutors will have to wage a multiple-front assault on the two former executives. The task force reduced the counts against Mr. Skilling last week to 31 from 35, but added 13 additional statements that they say are false and will support the charges.

While prosecutors have narrowed their case, some people think that they may not have narrowed it enough. "The government is using a shotgun approach where it may have wanted a rifle shot," said Philip H. Hilder, a Houston trial lawyer who is representing three potential government witnesses, including Sherron S. Watkins, a former Enron vice president who is credited with being a whistle-blower. "That will allow the defense to diffuse the impact of the government's case because they will have to tell a very complicated story."

Samantha Martin, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment about the government's case.

To be sure, it will be no easy task for prosecutors to explain their case. Much of it will focus on the latter part of the company's history, particularly 2001, when the walls came crumbling down. But trying to lead jurors through a linear timeline will be all but impossible. Instead, prosecutors are likely to take jurors inside each of Enron's business units, examining what they contend was the fraud that contributed to the company's problems and the statements made later to investors. The presentation is likely to be choppy, with many scenes out of order, potentially leaving some jurors scratching their heads.

To weave its tale, the government will draw on company insiders, internal and external accountants, credit analysts and would-be whistle-blowers. Although it has secured the cooperation of Mr. Fastow, who has acknowledged orchestrating fraud and who reported directly to both Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling, the government is not relying on him or any other witness to be its star. This case is likely to be defined by a host of lesser-known executives who will add key bits of testimony and who could provide some of the trial's most dramatic moments.

The defense, meanwhile, will draw from a list of 199 potential witnesses to try to pick apart the government's case. That list includes dozens of accountants, lawyers, equity analysts and former Enron managers, executives and directors. It also embraces a Who's Who of Houston society to serve as character witnesses.

Defense lawyers say they are eager to call witnesses to dig into the complexities of the accounting. "Our roles will be reversed in this case," Michael W. Ramsey, Mr. Lay's lead lawyer, said of the defense and prosecution. "We will want to defend the accounting transactions, and they will want to avoid prosecuting them."

The defense wants to use the government's flawed prosecution of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm, to challenge the case against Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling. A federal jury in Houston convicted the firm of obstruction of justice in 2002 for allegedly shredding tons of Enron-related documents in 2001, but the Supreme Court overturned the conviction last year, citing a flawed jury instruction. The verdict killed the firm nevertheless. United States District Judge Simeon T. Lake III, who is overseeing the Enron trial, has yet to rule on the admissibility of testimony about Andersen's prosecution.

The biggest defense stars may be the defendants themselves, both of whom want to take the stand, according to Mr. Ramsey and Daniel M. Petrocelli, Mr. Skilling's lead attorney.

Here is a look at several of the key witnesses and their expected contributions:

ANDREW S. FASTOW As Enron's former chief financial officer, he is the person most associated with criminal acts that took place at the company. Mr. Fastow has admitted that he began concocting off-balance-sheet partnerships as far back as 1999, and that he controlled those ostensibly independent partnerships while also serving as an Enron executive. The transactions were supposed to help Enron generate profits but ended up enriching Mr. Fastow and a small cadre of friends and investors. He personally pocketed some $60 million and has pleaded guilty to profiting illegally from the transactions. In exchange for his plea and his cooperation, he is likely to receive a 10-year prison sentence. Whether Mr. Fastow directly ties Mr. Skilling to the fraud or a cover-up will be a key moment in the trial.

BEN F. GLISAN JR. A former corporate treasurer, Mr. Glisan has admitted to helping concoct some of Mr. Fastow's financial deals and profiting from them. He is expected to admit that the deals illegally kept investment losses off the books and otherwise aided in manipulating Enron's balance sheet and income statement. Mr. Glisan, who is currently serving a five-year prison sentence, was effective as a witness for the government in a 2004 trial of bankers involved in the bogus sale of Nigerian barges. But outside lawyers say they are skeptical that he had enough personal contact with Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay to connect them directly to the accusations.

WANDA CURRY A former Enron internal accountant, Ms. Curry was digging into problems in Enron Energy Services, the retail unit that sold natural gas and power to department stores and other big energy users, when she discovered large, unacknowledged speculative trading losses in the retail division, as well as overvalued energy contracts. She told Mr. Causey of her discoveries in February 2001. Two months later she was pushed off the project.

DAVID W. DELAINEY A Skilling protégé, Mr. Delainey was tapped in February 2001 to take over Enron Energy Services. Mr. Skilling instructed him to transfer more than $500 million in energy trading losses from the unit to the profitable wholesale trading division. The government contends that the move was done to disguise losses and to misrepresent the retail business to investors, and that Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling later lied about it to investors. The defense will contend that the shift was legal and disclosed.

SHERRON S. WATKINS Prosecutors will try to portray Ms. Watkins, who worked in the finance department under Mr. Fastow, much as she was portrayed by Congress: as a heroine who warned Mr. Lay of problems with off-the-books entities called Raptors and famously predicted that the company would "implode in a wave of accounting scandals." But Ms. Watkins, who is co-author of a book about Enron, had little first-hand knowledge of what Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay actually knew about Mr. Fastow's actions before she wrote her August 2001 letter. And the defense is likely to try to undermine her credibility by questioning her about Enron stock sales she made after her meeting with Mr. Lay. "She isn't going to be a star witness," said Christopher J. Bebel, a Houston trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

VINCENT J. KAMINSKI As managing director of research, Mr. Kaminski oversaw many of Enron's risk-management functions. For months before the collapse, he complained bitterly inside the company about Mr. Fastow's schemes, saying that the accounting was fraudulent and wrongheaded and that it increased Enron's risk of a financial crisis. He complained to no avail to the chief risk officer, Richard B. Buy, and others. By October 2001, Mr. Kaminski had instructed his team to stop working with the global finance department. Prosecutors will try to use Mr. Kaminski, who is widely respected in the energy trading industry, to show that even as Mr. Skilling was telling investors that Enron had the best risk controls in the business, he was not telling them how much risk Enron was taking on.

MARK E. KOENIG Mr. Koenig, the head of investor relations, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting securities fraud by lying about the performance of the broadband and retail divisions. (His subordinate, Ms. Rieker, also pleaded guilty to Enron-related crimes, and, like Mr. Koenig, she is cooperating with prosecutors.) He could speak to any planning or preparation of false statements made by others to investors.

KENNETH D. RICE As head of the struggling broadband unit, Mr. Rice can testify about whether Mr. Skilling misrepresented the division's struggles. Mr. Rice has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and admitted to conspiring with others to describe Enron's network control software as revolutionary and the network as up and running, when neither was true. The misrepresentations helped bolster Enron stock and allowed him to profit from sales of inflated shares. But he will face a difficult cross-examination and accusations by the defense that he lied on the stand in last year's trial about the use of a promotional video touting the unit.

MICHAEL J. KOPPER A former Enron finance executive, he could testify whether the conspiracy to defraud Enron was confined to himself, Mr. Fastow, and Mr. Glisan. He also could testify about whether he and Mr. Fastow kept Mr. Skilling and Mr. Lay in the dark. As Enron's problems mounted in late 2001, Mr. Fastow ordered Mr. Kopper to destroy a laptop computer that kept track of the money they had made from their schemes. Although he has already pleaded guilty to having schemed with Mr. Fastow to enrich himself at Enron's expense, Mr. Kopper is expected to try to avoid testifying by exercising his Fifth Amendment right against incriminating himself for other acts.

DAVID B. DUNCAN The lead partner on Andersen's Enron account, he could underscore the defense's contention that outside auditors and lawyers had approved Enron's accounting, and thus that Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling had no reason to be suspicious of it. But his effectiveness for the defense could be negated by his role in the intentional shredding of millions of documents when it was becoming apparent that the firm would be investigated by federal officials. Mr. Duncan pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government, but withdrew his plea last year after the Supreme Court reversal of Andersen's conviction. He, too, is expected to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying.

GREG WHALLEY Enron's former president, who worked with Mr. Skilling to build Enron's energy trading operation and was Mr. Lay's right-hand man in the weeks before Enron declared bankruptcy, could bolster the defense's contention that Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling were kept in the dark. He is also expected to resist testifying.

JEFFREY MCMAHON The chief financial officer after Mr. Fastow was dismissed, he could bolster defense arguments that the fraud was confined to a select group led by Mr. Fastow. Mr. McMahon, however, is also expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying.

Judge Lake could order Mr. Kopper, Mr. Duncan or others to testify and give them a limited immunity, said Joel M. Androphy, a Houston trial lawyer specializing in white-collar crime. Or he could instruct the jury in strong terms to consider that people are refusing to testify out of concern that they could be prosecuted, but that they might have valuable information for the defense.

While defense lawyers expect to use only a fraction of the fact witnesses on their list, Mr. Ramsey said he was prepared to call a long list of witnesses to vouch for Mr. Lay's character. A half-dozen powerful friends have already agreed to testify, including Drayton McLane Jr., the owner of the Houston Astros; Archie W. Dunham, the former chairman of ConocoPhillips; and Robert A. Mosbacher Sr., who was commerce secretary under President George H. W. Bush.

Mr. Ramsey wants to go further and show that Mr. Lay also affected people outside his high-powered circle. To do that, he has been asking former Enron employees to testify on Mr. Lay's behalf. Among those who have recently agreed to take the stand, he said, is a former Enron employee, now retired, whom Mr. Lay helped a decade ago by using a company plane to fly the man to his badly injured daughter, whom he otherwise could not have reached as quickly.

"I want to be able to prove that at the human level, when called upon to act, Ken did the right thing time after time," Mr. Ramsey said last week.

Mr. Skilling's character witnesses promise to be less star-studded but potentially more valuable. He will draw on his wife, Rebecca; his younger brother, Mark; and Steve Zimmerman, the owner of Zimm's, a Houston pub he frequented, to testify about Mr. Skilling's state of mind when he decided to abruptly step down as chief executive in August 2001. He has cited personal reasons for his departure, which came a few months before Enron began to fall apart.

Also on the list are Samuel Zell, the billionaire Chicago real estate developer who was part of a small group of investors Mr. Skilling approached in late 2001 in a failed effort to raise $3 billion to salvage Enron. Mr. Skilling had told friends that Mr. Zell was willing to invest a great deal of his own fortune, estimated at the time at close to $70 million, and to work for no pay.

[FaGal]

January 28, 2006
After Four Years, Enron's Lay and Skilling to Face Jury
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Four years after the dramatic demise of Enron Corp., former chiefs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling will enter a federal courtroom in Houston on Monday to face charges linking them to one of the biggest business disasters in U.S. history.

The case against Lay, 63, and Skilling, 52, hinges on whether the two executives, who once enthralled Wall Street by creating a company that became the nation's seventh largest, were aware of Enron's financial shell game that pumped up earnings while hiding billions of dollars in debt.

The Enron Task Force, a special unit created by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate wrongdoing at the Houston-based company, will parade several former Enron executives who have struck plea agreements in front of jurors to try to tie Lay and Skilling to criminal acts of fraud and conspiracy.

The government's case got a boost last month when Enron's former chief accountant, Richard Causey, who was due to go on trial with Lay and Skilling, struck a deal that will send him to prison for seven years and likely put him in the witness stand.

``I think the only (thing the defense) has to stand on is that Skilling and Lay had no knowledge of this, and that may have been easier before Causey's deal,'' said Henry Pontell, criminology professor at the University of California-Irvine and co-author of the white collar crime book ``Profit Without Honor.''

FIRST CORPORATE SCANDAL

Enron had been widely hailed as an energy market innovator before it imploded in 2001 after its illicit use of off-balance sheet partnerships to hide billions of dollars in debt and pump up earnings was unveiled.

After that, Enron and its crooked ``E'' logo became a symbol of corporate malfeasance that would soon be joined by scandals at other blue chip companies, such as HealthSouth, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Adelphia.

The energy trader's bankruptcy filing left thousands jobless and wiped out billions of dollars in workers' retirement accounts -- a factor that will make choosing an unbiased jury in Houston a tricky affair.

Lay faces seven charges, including conspiracy and fraud, all of which stem from the few months when he returned to the chief executive post vacated by Skilling before the company's bankruptcy.

Prosecutors have lodged 31 charges against Skilling, including conspiracy, fraud, lying to auditors and insider trading for his stock sales.

Both men have denied their guilt, and Lay has gone directly to the public on several occasions, including in a speech last month where he said he was a victim of prosecutors' ``wave of terror.''

Pontell said it is a common defense tactic of trying to blame over-zealous prosecutors for the charges.

``It's not only used by white collar criminals, it's used by juvenile delinquents,'' he said.

But that strategy has been used successfully before.

``It worked for HealthSouth. They're hoping it will work as well as it did for Richard Scrushy,'' said Linnea McCord, associate professor of business law at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management, referring to CEO Scrushy's acquittal on all criminal charges linked to that accounting scandal.

Causey, as well as Enron financial mastermind Andrew Fastow, who also struck a plea deal that calls for him to go prison for up to 10 years, are expected to be key witnesses against Lay and Skilling in the trial expected to last four months.

Defense lawyers have blamed Fastow and his finance team as the culprits behind the crimes at Enron, but said Causey only made his plea deal because he was threatened with a long prison sentence if convicted.

Many of the crimes alleged involve complicated accounting issues, which could make it difficult for prosecutors to keep a coherent story line going for the jury, and open up opportunities for defense lawyers.

``That's where the skill of the attorneys really comes into play,'' McCord said.

[FaGal]

LA STAMPA giovedì 11 maggio 2006
19 LA GRANDE TRUFFA PAGATI 90 MILIONI DI DOLLARI - Credit Suisse patteggia per uscire dal crac Enron

NEW YORK - Credit Suisse, seconda maggiore banca svizzera, pagherà a Enron 90 milioni di dollari per chiudere il contenzioso che riguarda le responsabilità riconosciute agli istituti finanziari nella vicenda della bancarotta del colosso energetico texano avvenuta nel 2001. Enron nel 2003 aveva fatto causa ad almeno 10 istituti finanziari con l'accusa di aver contribuito alla frode contabile che portò al crollo della società di Houston.

Nella lista degli istituti di credito citati in giudizio dalla Enron e che ancora non hanno chiuso la vicenda giudiziaria, figurano Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Fleet Financial Bank e Merrill Lynch. A febbraio scorso, invece, risale l'accordo con Lehman Brothers che aveva siglato un patteggiamento di 69,9 milioni di dollari, mentre ad agosto era stata la Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce a siglare un'intesa da 250 milioni di dollari.

Intanto il processo contro gli ex vertici del gruppo energetico americano sta entrando nel vivo. Accusa e difesa hanno finito i loro interrogatori. La sentenza è attesa entro la fine dell’estate.

[FaGal]

Crack Enron, le banche pagano
Risarcimento da 6,6 mld di dollari per Canadiano Imperial Bank of Commerce, Jp Morgan e Citigroup
http://www.assinews.it/rassegna/arti...le250506en.pdf