Probes going deeper into Enron swaps : Questions on accounting of swap deals

The Orange County Register ^ | May 22, 2002 | New York Times

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Deals last year with Qwest and Global Crossing raise red flags over possible use of accounting tricks.

Federal officials are stepping up their investigation of Enron's deals to swap fiber-optic network capacity with Qwest Communications and Global Crossing, according to people familiar with the inquiries.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

An earlier article on this:

Global Crossing's Use of Swaps To Boost Revenue Wasn't Unusual

Here is a swap in a commodity other than Energy with the intent of boosting revenue.

[Robert357]

I think that having the SEC investigate the Swaps is appropriate. I am not sure about either FERC investigating power swaps or the FCC investigating communication broadband swaps.

"It raises the real question of whether companies are creating real economic revenue or sham transactions financially engineered to report to shareholders," says Lynn Turner, former chief accountant at the SEC between 1998 and 2001.

If Enron, Reliant, Global... did swaps to appear to stockholders differently than they were, it is cauld attempting to defraud stockholders and the SEC should step in and go after the company, its board of directors and it accountant.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just looking at the May 27 issue of BW and they have article on QWEST which seems to travel in the pack also.

Not directly related with Swaps, but with "accounting techniques".