It took four years, but it was still satisfying that former Enron executives Ken Lay (in photo) and Jeffrey Skilling were finally been found guilty — and on all counts. Both plan to appeal Thursday’s verdicts, of course. But as The Washington Post reported: “Now the two men, who together invested close to $70 million in their defense, face the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in prison and living in history as the ringleaders of a fraud at a company whose name became synonymous with accounting tricks and rule-breaking.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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26 Comments
Good, now lets hope they get long sentences in a real prison, with beatings and salad tossing. Hopefully the ex Enron employees sue these assholes into poverty
I might be right http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3898667.htmlt be right
Wittig, Lake, Lay, Skilling, Bernie, Dennis K., Duke Cunningham, Max Ary, etc., etc. The long arm of hubris strikes again.Look to Home Depot for the next one. Bob Mardeli, $123 million in pay, plus options and bonuses, showed his arrogance and distain for stockholders and people in general yesterday by stonewalling the annual meeting. He’ll get his – it is just a question of time.
I think that short prison sentences (2-5 years) are a good idea. I think that long prison sentences are a bad idea–IF Messrs. Lay and Skilling will CONFESS to wrongdoing. You have two EXPERTS in fraudulent corporate accounting schemes. Remember “Catch Me If You Can?” Think about hackers who have turned to fixing computer security problems.
If they don’t admit to commiting crimes and express contrition at their sentencing hearing, then incarceration for the rest of their lives is in order.
They were pretty unrepentant yesterday heartlander. Kenny boy thinks god will still vindicate him. Maybe he mistakes a future bush pardon for god’s forgiveness.
How can anyone (not you!) say that we should throw the book at mexicans here illegally, make felons of them and incarcerate them, and then let these guys go with short sentances?
The damage done by an illegal family? A few jobs, a few bucks in lost taxes.
The damage done by the corporate cowboys at enron?
THOUSANDs of jobs lost, thousands of hardworking people left without their pensions and savings, the destruction of an american corporate giant, and MILLIONS of tax dollars spent bringing them to justice.
You decide who should get the short sentences.
KSF please dont bring Immigration into this. I really think that is a seperate issue!!
Gittin Madder I totatlly agree with you about Home Depot. I am a recent former Employee of HD and I only saw 63 cents in raises in the past five years. Nardeli had his pay increased 300% from 04 to 05. He is another one we should keep an eye on, because I dont believe HD is doing that well below the surface of public display.
Of course immigration is a separate issue. Hearlander’s post is about criminals and how we treat them. If we treat immigrants like criminals, I think criminal treatment is fair game for this thread.
Lay and Skilling were convicted, but what about the $9-plus billion owed to electricity consumers?
Bush’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission slapped Enron–and the other power pirates–on the wrist. Could that have something to do with the fact that Ken Lay, in secret chats with Dick Cheney, selected the Commission’s chairmen?
Here’s more on Bush’s relationship with ‘Kenny-Boy’ and the secret plan to save Enron
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/052506.html
KFG, we lost money due to a Morgan Stanley broker who advised us to invest in Enron two weeks before it imploded. If Messrs. Lay and Skilling remain unrepetent, they are sociopaths. I think redemption may be possible, but they will determine this. This Rev. Walker supporting Mr. Lay seems to me to be a crank.
Sorry heartlander. I have multiple friends in Houston who lost HUGE 401k money. Some they had rolled over from previous jobs into Enron stuff. Utility companies are notorious for funding their retirement plans with company stock.
I also had friends in Houston who lost their jobs with Anderson when THEIR role in this was uncovered. They didnt do anything wrong, but when their company was punished, well, stuff rolls downhill as you know.
I guess if kenny boy is having a spiritual death bed conversion, then I say better late than never. And I am glad his minister is sticking with him.
But, like chuck colson, he is gonna still have to take his punishment. Given the lives he and his merry band of thieves have destroyed, he should never see sunlight again.
Why is it the more money you steal the less prison time you get?
Maybe because the more money you have, the more elected officials and judges you can buy?
Some people can afford better justice than others. It’s related to unrestrained free markets (a good thing). It is part of the personal responsibility culture, remember?
Zionists offer to teach Americans how to be ass-holes.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=719046&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1
Nobody cares.
Well… if you look at this from a scoiology and criminal justice point of view, which I have in several classes it is societies tolerance of things.
It is basically white collar crime vs. blue collar crime.
Our society sees the guy robbing Quick trip with a gun as a more severe offense than the old white guy who manipulated the books to steal millions.
It is more to do with the development of our Justice System through history and the way we as a society react and interact with it.
I think that what these Enron execs did is 10 times worse than some guy robbing a quick trip and they deserve life sentences for all the lives they ruined.
It is going to take more than me and many more to change that by demanding that ALL white collar crimes be punished more harshly.
Unfortunately as is noted above, the justice system is not fair. You get only as much justice as you can afford.
These guys could afford an awful lot of justice. But a jury of their peers still found them guilty. Proof I say that their crimes were so egregious and vile as to be impossible to make go away.
They should get worse than the maximum under the law. Their crimes destroyed lives and hurt the economy. Personally I would not be opposed to the death penalty in this case. But of course that is not possible.
Bad news is, I lay you even money bush pardons them both. Mark that I said that.
Good news is if he doesn’t these two will be in jail for the rest of their lives.
Nathan, I might know you’d come off with some “law and order” diatribe.
I agree 100%. These people do this because they think they’re better. I don’t mind seeing them do 20 years, if nothing more than to make an example.
It isn’t just Enron, it’s wide spread. How much is this kind of theivery costing us?
Put em in jail like us regular folks.
Major problems exists in the rules of management of large corporations. Real people, individual stockholders, are far out-numbered by institutional stockholders such as insurance companies and large investment companies. Do these large holders of common stock in major companies have an interest in what I would call PEOPLE ISSUES or are they purely interested in factors that favor their investment companies? Are they manipulating stock prices and buying in/out on small changes in stock prices? Are they thus leaving small stockholders with say, $50,000 or less invested in their stock, little or no real say in operation of their company?
Perhaps meetings of stockholders should exclude the giant investors because their interests are different than small investors. There must be ways to make corporate high roller officers tell the truth to and listen to small investors.
I personally believe the stock message boards of some of these large companies are starting to blow the whistle on some of these executives resulting in prison sentences. So this should be encouraged.
Incidentally, it appears these corporate wrong-doers are being sent to federal prison, most likely much better accomodations than state prisons …. and a lot more expensive to taxpayers. Federal prisons probably cost $70,000 to $100,000 per year per prisoner. This “room and board” should be re-paid by convicted former Enron and Westar executives.
How come Terry McAuliffe, the former DNC chairman didn’t get jail time for the Global Crossing corporate scandal and made out with tens of millions of dollars?
Or Franklin Raines, the former budget director under Bill Clinton and now the CEO of Fannie Mae and their multi-billion dollar accounting scandal and he is walking away with a $90 million pay package?
Corporate raiders cross both party boundries, but looks like the Democrat ones gets the walk.
They ALL should go to prison.
Rev Jim Baker was raped in a fed pen, im sure Lay and Skilling will toss some salad while in the pen being famous all ready garantees them a couple beatings
I predict they will stay out of prison on appeal until just before Bush leaves office. Then he will immediately pardon them and all the other corrupt cronies.
They will never spend a night in prison.
You might be right Sum1. Bill Clinton did the same thing to all of his corrupt buddies as well.
You had to give Clinton a donation for a pardon a la Mrs Rich for her husband. While his “Friends” like Susan McDougal rotted in prison. George Bush SR pardoned Ollie NOrth and the other IRan-COntra suspects, and they sold weapons to terrorists
Enron’s game-playing screwed up California’s economy, adversely affecting MILLIONS of Americans. Retirees like my mom saw their “safe” old-fashioned utility stocks tank, i.e. dividends they needed to live on. A pardon is not in order. If Bush does this, then when the dems take control, they need to open the Cheney Oil Task Force records, plus all the past-presidential records that Bush ordered closed if children of presidents decided they didn’t want the public to see.
Fossil energy needs to be nationalized. There are innumerable business opportunities for private-market players to go after from cookies to cars. The ethos of “I got this claim, and it’s mine,” is obsolete. It is no longer a useful paradigm. Nationalization wouldn’t have to be necessary if the energy bidnessmen acted as responsible stewards of this critical resource, but all too often they fail to be responsible stewards. Society at large cannot afford their greed.
Robert Scheer: Bush LinksEnergized Enron
Posted on May 30, 2006
From The Smoking GunThen-Texas Gov. George W. Bush wrote this letter to then-Enron Chairman Ken Lay in 1997. Personal letters like this one, obtained by The Smoking Gun, lay waste to Bush’s claim to be only a distant acquaintance of the disgraced energy trader.By Robert ScheerThe Bush family consistently acted to put Enron and its longtime CEO, Ken Lay, into a position to rip off investors and taxpayers. Why is the mass media ignoring that fact now that Lay has been convicted in arguably the most egregious example of white-collar fraud in U.S. history?Until he hooked up with the Bushes, Lay was just another mid-level energy trader complaining endlessly about being hemmed in by onerous government regulations and those terrible consumer lawyers who prevent free market hustlers from doing their thing. But after he and his company became top supporters of the Bushes — eventually giving $3 million in total to various Bush electoral campaigns and the Republican Party — doors opened for them in a big way. In particular, once Bush the father got rid of key energy industry regulations, Lay was a made man and Enron’s fortunes soared.This program of corporate welfare led Lay to dub the first President Bush “the energy president” in a column supporting his reelection because “just six months after George Bush became president, he directed … the development of a new energy strategy,” which, in effect, compelled local utility companies to carry Enron electricity on their wires. It was, Lay crowed, “the most ambitious and sweeping energy plan ever proposed.”Another huge gift from the first Bush regime came in the form of a ruling by Wendy Gramm, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that permitted Enron to trade in energy derivatives, making possible the company’s exponential growth. Five weeks after that ruling, Gramm resigned and joined the Enron board of directors, serving on its subsequently much criticized audit committee. Six years later, Gramm’s husband, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), further enabled Enron greed by pushing through additional anti-regulation legislation.A long list of members of George H.W. Bush’s Cabinet and inner circle, including Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, went to work for Enron after his 1992 defeat. An even greater number of Enron officials returned the favor by joining the George W. Bush administration in 2001 shortly before the Enron scandal exploded.The close connections between President Bush and Lay began when they both worked on the 1992 Bush père presidential reelection campaign. In fact, a long paper trail of their friendly and collaborative correspondence has been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests. “Dear Ken, one of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older — just like you!” wrote then-Texas Gov. Bush in April 1997. “Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife.” In Lay’s typed responses — some are handwritten — he sometimes crossed out Bush’s formal titles to scrawl a friendly “George,” emphasizing their personal history before he urged the governor to, for example, help Enron secure foreign energy contracts with regimes in Romania and Uzbekistan, or called for so-called tort reform designed to protect corporations from lawsuits.Typical was Bush’s role in Enron lobbying of Pennsylvania’s governor to permit Enron to enter his state’s energy market. As Lay wrote in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1997: “I very much appreciated your call to Gov. Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal.” After the Enron crash, Bush attempted to distance himself from the “Bush pioneer,” who had sent more than $2 million in Enron funds George W.’s way, as well as supplying him with the Enron company jet on at least eight occasions. “I have not met with him personally,” Bush said after the scandal broke.What Bush left out was not only his hundreds of personal encounters with Lay before he assumed the presidency but, more important, Lay’s key role in drafting the Bush administration’s energy policy. Lay met with energy task force chairman Dick Cheney at least six times. It was Lay who submitted a key memo opposing price caps in response to the energy crisis in California that Enron had helped engineer. Lay was also instrumental in the abrupt dismissal of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The neutered FERC later conveniently refused California’s loud pleas for help.So far, California has recouped some of the billions in taxpayer and pension funds it lost, and several of Enron’s top dogs are looking at hard time. Perhaps, after this November, if the opposition party can retake at least one branch of government, the connections between these corporate criminals and their buddy in the White House can be more fully investigated as well.