Former Enron CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling were found guilty today of most/all charges, both now face lengthy prison sentences:
Bloomberg--A U.S. jury convicted Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of orchestrating the fraud that destroyed Enron Corp., giving prosecutors a victory a case that came to symbolize corporate crime sparked by the stock market bust in 2000. Jurors in federal court in Houston deliberated six days before finding Lay, Enron's former chairman, and Skilling, its former chief executive officer, guilty today of fraud, conspiracy and other charges. The panel heard four months of testimony before reaching a decision in the case.
Update 1:26 PM EDT: Reuters--Lay was convicted of all six counts of conspiracy and fraud and faces a maximum of 45 years in prison. Skilling was found guilty of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, insider trading and making false statements which, combined, carry a maximum sentence of 185 years. ... In a separate trial for Lay, Judge Lake found Lay guilty of all four bank fraud charges for illegally using money from $75 million in personal loans to buy stock. Each of those four charges carries a maximum of 30 years, but experts say he is unlikely to get a sentence more than six months for each because he paid off the loans and the lenders suffered no economic damage.
Lay is known to be a very close personal friend of current US president George W. Bush, and was one of the largest contributors to his presidential campaigns. His contribution history is $651,760 to Republicans, $61,960 to Democrats, and $62,150 to special interests (Source: Breakdown by Candidate or PAC). He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Advisory Committee and was rumored to be the early top contender for Secretary of the Treasury until his untimely fall from grace and credibility.
Skilling was a long time idea man and Enron power broker who served a couple of stints at CEO. He is a well known political cash cow with a campaign contribution history of $162,750 to Republicans, $9,750 to Democrats, and $50,783 classified as special interests (Source: Breakdown by Candidate or PAC).
Among the thousands of employees and investors ruined by Enron's fraud were several personal friends of mine. Some of them have said they were encouraged to invest every dime they could spare into Enron common stock even as insiders allegedly unloaded large blocks. These were geologists, engineers, and line workers, easy prey for slick offers of easy money and utterly ill-equipped to rationally judge the wisdom of that advice. They were robbed of their jobs, their savings, their benefits including health insurance, and their pension, all in one shot. This development will not change that and nothing short of a big check out Skilling or Lay's bank account could possibly even come close to offsetting the misery these crooks engineered. But I do hope it provides all those wounded some small measure of closure and satisfaction to know that the leaders of the company who once lived in unimaginable splendor, at the profound expense of so many working class victims, will be frog marched into a cinder block cell and hopefully die of old age on a cheap cement floor surrounded by their fellow convicts.
But while the long arm of justice may have been slow in this case, in the future it may be rendered obsolete. George Bush may grant his crooked friend a pardon. Or come to think of it, the President can simply flex his ever growing unitary muscle and overturn the verdict for any reason he wishes to state, or no reason at all.