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Ex-Enron |
By Kaleem OmarEx-Enron CFO faces 31 more charges
On Thursday, former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow - one of the men at the centre of the scandal, along with Enron founder and former chairman Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeff Skilling - and his wife and nine other former executives were indicted on a host of fraud, insider trading and other counts.
Fastow now faces 109 charges related to Enron's collapse, according to new indictments unsealed in Houston, Texas. His wife, Lea Fastow, is charged with six counts, including money laundering conspiracy, filing false tax returns and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to an Associated Press report, Mrs Fastow, a former Enron assistant treasurer, walked into the US Internal Revenue Service office in Houston on Thursday and surrendered. Her husband dropped her off!
Seven former executives with an Internet division called Enron Broadband Services (EBS) also were charged in the new indictments. They are accused of orchestrating a scheme to mislead investors through a series of false statements that portrayed the venture as successful.
In fact, prosecutors contend, EBS never generated any revenue and was abandoned by Enron shortly before the company filed for bankruptcy in December 2001.
Enron was formed in 1985 by a merger of two gas pipeline companies. Through the 1990s, Enron transformed itself into a massive energy-trading house that collapsed in 2001 in a whirlwind of revelations of hidden debt, inflated profits and accounting tricks.
Enron founder and former chairman Kenneth Lay is a longtime crony of George W. Bush from the days when Bush was a businessman in Texas and later governor of the state. Lay and his company contributed millions of dollars to Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns.
According to Associated Press, those named in the broadband services indictment on Thursday are former EBS chairman and co-chief executive Kenneth Rice, former president ande co-chief executive Joseph Hirko, former chief operating officer Kevin Hannon, and former senior vice-presidents Scott Yeager and Rex Shelby. They are charged with securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Two other EBS executives, Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz, had been charged previously and are named in new counts in Thursday's indictments.
The indictments allege that Rice, Hirko, Hannon, Yeager and Shelby sold large amounts of Enron stock while they knew EBS was failing, bringing themselves some $ 186 million in profits. The US government is seeking forfeiture of more than $ 100 million of those profits.
According to Associated Press, the new Fastoe indictment also brings charges of securities fraud, insider trading, falsification of accounting records and tax fraud against two other Enron executives, former treasurer Ben Gilsan and former finance executive Dan Boyle.
Mrs Fastow is charged with conspiring to reap profits from Enron wind farms in a partnership known as RADR and, along with her husband, failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service. The Fastows worked at a Chicago bank before joining Enron in 1990. Mrs Fastopw was assistant treasurer when she left the company in 1997.
According to Associated Press, the names of the Fastows and their family foundation are on several bank accounts frozen by federal prosecutors before Fastow was indicted on October 31 last year. Andrew Fastow is free on a $ 5 million bond. A status hearing in his case is scheduled for May 19.