Whether he did or didn't do anything illegal aside, I don't think they have anything to convict him on like the rest.
Speaking of Grand Jury, didn't the Plame Jury expire last Friday with no incitements?
Posted on 07/05/2004 11:34:14 AM PDT by Bobby777
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Former Enron CEO and Chairman Kenneth Lay will likely be indicted this week, sources close to the investigation told CNN Monday.
While a last-minute delay was still possible, federal authorities involved with the Justice Department's Enron Task Force expect a federal grand jury next week will return an indictment of Lay, these people said, speaking on condition that they not be identified.
They would not discuss what charges might be brought against Lay. The Justice Department would not comment on the reports of a possible indictment.
Lay, 62, guided Enron for years, shaping the once-obscure pipeline company into the nation's seventh-largest corporation and a world-leading energy trading concern.
Lay's lawyer, Michael Ramsey, told Reuters the government lacked the evidence to win an indictment from a grand jury, and said an internal dispute at the Justice Department had triggered recent leaks about impending charges.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
The government wants to appear "tough on white collar crime" for the election.
Whether he did or didn't do anything illegal aside, I don't think they have anything to convict him on like the rest.
Speaking of Grand Jury, didn't the Plame Jury expire last Friday with no incitements?
They have been tough in white collar crime......
He was the guy in charge and if he didn't know what was going on,he should have known.
I hope they fry his a**.
I'm not familiar with Plame. You know, there was one Arthur Andersen guy who refused to show a $100 million dollar loss on a sports team as a $50 million profit (or it was a a $50 million loss they wanted to show as a $100 million profit) ...
in either case, a call was made to the home office (of AA) in either Houston or Chicago, and the guy was immediately replaced for being "uncooperative" ... I can't remember his name but there was an article mentioning him on FR several years ago ...
a scandal that big, I have no doubt he knew exactly what was going on and tried to keep his name off all the "transactions" ...
Hard to believe this crook is still walking around instead of doing 10 in the joint.
yep, this was no "accounting error", it was a thoroughly planned and executed effort to build a pyramid-type scheme to bilk investors by fraudulently reporting "profits and assets" and hiding debts and liabilities in thousands of offshore "companies" ...
which is one reason AA ain't around anymore ...
I agree with you that's why I said ASIDE from his guilt. You can't convict him of incompetence.
I just think he'll walk.
The actual crimes in Enron were small potatoes, dollar wise. Those who were angry about Enron (besides Dem dullards) were those that got burned by throwing their money away chasing its stock.
However, most of the stock runup was due to factors other than the dough that a few in-house accountants ripped off. Enron was very much like other dotcom stocks on which people were gambling the future, rather than the fundamentals. Investors were projecting Enron controlling energy trading and other forms of commodities buying/selling.
If you want to go after the big swindle of the 90s, concentrate on the dotcoms. Those turkeys were promising the sun and the moon to suckers. If Dems want to go after Ken Lay for touting & believing in his failing stock, then there's a lot more ground to plow in Silicon Valley boardrooms (or what's left of the wreckage). After all, the dotcom swindle makes Enron look like pocket change.
Before the election they drag out the old smear Bush via "Kenny Boy" and Enron red herring again.
hopefully they won't let all the leaders of this $80 billion dollar ripoff go unindicted.
Fine with me. Actually, because of money I lost in WorldCom, I hope that the Government attempts to put board members of all major white collar crimes in jail. That includes the "independent auditors" who were suppose to blow the whistle via disclosure documents to stockholders and the SEC.
My feeling is that for the stockmarket to become more of an acceptable place for "common folk" in the US to invest for retirement, our government needs to make sure that companies that are actively traded in the stock market are operated legally. There a many companies that operate illegally (like MicroSoft & Oracle) where all the Board of Directors need to contemplate jail time if they continue to operate in violation of various US laws.
Whether it is A. Anderson, Worldcom, Tyco, Enron, or a host of others, real "over-the line" criminal activity took place. Obviously, many of these companies have imploded and the "wealth" of their principals has been dramatically decreased beyond the point that seizing their assets will do much to restore stockholders. I feel strongly that the Board members, outside accountants, attorneys that advised these firms, and investment bankers involved in some of the shady deals should all have their "licenses, state registrations" stripped and even see the inside of a jail.
If more attorneys realize that shaddy deals could prevent them from ever practicing law again, and may result in jail time and accountants see "looking the otherway" as something that will destroy their career and make them share a room with Bubba, there will be a lot fewer Enron/Worldcom/Tyco kinds of things in the future. In a perfect world there would be self policing of accountants and investment bankers by their peers. I don't see that happening, so I don't mind taking a year or two and making examples out of some of those at these companies.
I for one think that even if there is no smoking gun pointing at Key Lay, that he and other Board Members of Enron had an obligation to actively manage in the stockholders interest. The corruption of A. Anderson and certain investment bankers who cut deals with the CFO of Enron, may be mitigating circumstances that reduce the sentence of Ken Lay, but there needs to be greater Board accountability for criminal activity.
The old tradition about the captain of the ship or the officer of the watch, being repsonsible for bad things happening, should hold equally true for companies in the stockmarket. Ken Lay shouldn't be sent to jail for Enron stock loosing value. He should be sent to jail for failure to uphold his fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders of Enron.
Most disappointing to me was to hear his wife talk of their devout born-again Christian faith. Walking the talk has always been the challenge.
I hope the feds hit him hard.
If you want to go after the big swindle of the 90s, concentrate on the dotcoms.
While I agree with you that Even as Alan Greenspan cautioned folks that stockprices had gone to speculative highs, above fundamentals, I still think that some heads should roll at Enron, Worldcom, Arthor Anderson, Tyco, etc.
I didn't own any Enron stock, because I thought it was grossly overpriced. My wife did inherit some Worldcom stock. When I looked at buying either Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble stock, I felt that at least Barnes and Noble had a "real business." Many of the dot.com business models were just glorified sales representatives taking advertising money from the parent company and collecting sales commissions from the customers and providing little in-between. When they didn't deliver the volume of projected sales, they collapsed.
From my perspective, the "dot.com" people who should be gone after (beside their boards) are the investment banks the put together the IPO marketing plans and made false pitches to the general public, so that initial venture capital investors and insider principals could cash out to the general public.
If this country is to solve its "social security problem." It will not only need to incourage a mass immigration of highly skilled workers from other countries, it will have to straighten out the stock markets, investment banking firms, and mutual funds companies so that "joe public" get's a fair investment of his self directed retirement funds.
Not making examples out of the Boards of Enron, Worldcom, Aurthor Anderson, Tyco, etc. will just make it that much harder to solve the future "retirement" problem of this country.
I agree completely. But AFAIK, all these "limited partnership" scams that Enron engaged in were completely legal under our tax codes, although questionable from an SEC standpoint. Clearly, the stockholders had no way of knowing what was going on, since the house of cards that was Enron was never disclosed to shareholders AFAIK.
Ken Lay shouldn't be sent to jail for Enron stock loosing value. He should be sent to jail for failure to uphold his fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders of Enron.
Maybe. If he broke the law, he should go to jail. Otherwise, not. My only concern is that the government wants to get him so badly that they will invent some new crime that he was guilty of like they pretty much did with Martha Stewart.
As to Key Lay, I agree that he probably did nothing wrong from a federal tax-law perspective. However, I feel that from an SEC perspective, he (as the embodyment of Enron Management), must have slipped up on some SEC filing.
When I was in business school we studied a number of court cases in a business ethic course, and I remember a CEO going to jail, because the grocery store chain he headed, sold some tainted foods, even though the CEO had policies in place to prevent such a thing happening and the person who was stocking the tained goods was clearly acting by himself and for his own illegal gains, not the benefit of the company. The business ethics leason we were to learn from the case was that if there are laws to hold corporations accountable for their actions, then someone has to be "accountable."
I think that it is time to make companies accountable for their actions beyond just "fines" when the company lies to the SEC and their stockholders. Otherwise we digress into class action stockholder suits that will destroy the stockmarket.
I think that serving on the "Audit Committee" of a corporation's Board of Directors should be viewed as a very "risky" job and one that is not taken lightly. I view the same for being on the Board and an officer of a company. My feeling is that most Board Members and upper management of publicly held corporations are paid way too much money for the level of accountability they now have. If some of the CEO's really "deserve" millions a year in salary & perks, then they should be accountable for the actions of the company.
I personally like the new SEC requirement for CEO's & CFO's to sign and personnally attest to the accuracy of certain documents filed with the SEC. I view that as a step in the right direction. Previously, I feel stockholders assumed that the upper management and the auditors were attesting to the accuracy of financial data in audited annual reports. (Actually, I think that various company management/executives, investment bankers and the accounting profession should both be held liable for a lot of the Enron/WorldCom/Tyco excesses.)
Is that why Lay's sidekick, Fastow entered a plea in a federal court in Houston and agreed to serve a 10-year prison sentence *WITHOUT* parole? And his damn wife is going to the joint to. They are all crooks. LOL!
Small potatoes eh?
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