Fastow concedes no record of conversations with Skilling on side deals

Fastow concedes no record of conversations with Skilling on side deals

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20060309-1456-enrontrial.html

HOUSTON – Jeffrey Skilling's lawyer painstakingly challenged whether the former chief executive gave secret guarantees that partnerships run by Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow wouldn't lose money if the two men pretended to buy weak Enron assets to help the company manipulate earnings.
Fastow, whose testimony has been highly anticipated, underwent a second day of intense cross-examination Thursday in the conspiracy and fraud trial of Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay.






Fastow has linked both his former bosses to a wide-ranging effort to hide Enron's wobbly finances from investors, in part by using his partnerships to buy assets and rid the energy company's books of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Lay has repeatedly pegged Fastow as a crook who betrayed his trust and helped undermine the company, which collapsed into bankruptcy proceedings in December 2001. His lawyers have yet to cross-examine the ex-CFO.

But Petrocelli worked tirelessly to depict Fastow as a liar, cheat, thief and a bad husband who failed to plead guilty to any of the dozens of counts against him before his wife was indicted in May 2003. Fastow pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in January 2004
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They had it all figured out!!! and then :nuke:

that even if Skilling/Lay did not participate in the construction of the side deals - they knew about them by the end - and even with that knowledge committed fraud - by lying to analysts, by lying to employees (and pushing them to invest more).. then there is the market manipulation in the west (though I don't believe that is covered in this trial), and other unsavory acts of fraud and likely illegal activities.

I believe Lay was much more out of the loop than Skilling, at the end Lay was in way too deep with Enron stock to have known everything. Lay was guilty of lying and misleading analysts/employees though. Fastow was the one who definitely was lining his pockets with the side deals (and keeping very quiet about it). I recommend the book "Conspiracy of Fools" as one of best researched book on the story.

I agree the market manipulation is huge and doesn't get the attention it deserves.

and from what I recall of the reporting at the time... I think the book is going heavy at pointing the entire fiasco on Fastow and cleaning off a little bit the roles of Lay and Skilling. Doesn't quite jibe in the sense that (so far at least) almost all of the problems are being painted as the raptor partnerships - and again, some very indepth reporting at the time looked at more of the business problems - and other vehicles /partnerships that were used to hide debt that I don't think were the Fastow fund vehicles.

I do agree that Lay seems to have been out of the loop for a good deal of the time when things were getting far out of hand - but he knew what was going on when he started pumping the stock - and thus is guilty of fraud as well - just not as deep as Fastow and Skilling.

a chance to earn his money by crowing and picking on Fastow for hours on end.

Making the jury believe that Fastow deceived Skilling and Saint Lay is a joke.

I hope it backfires on Petrocelli

Especially given that the "accounting reforms" that Enron and the other corporate implosions caused - are reportedly being skirted - and thus investing in the market is just as much of a crap shoot (as in- there is no real good info about companies, profits, revenues, etc.) as it became clear that it had become back in 2002. I fear that we are still some time away (as in years) before there becomes a ground-swell that begins to reject the corporatocracy thinking (that all things for corps is good as it trickles down be good for the people and thus the merging of govt and corp in order for govt to aid corps rather than restrain corps in the interest of the people) which still dominates the public's "conventional wisdom."

been greased. Accordingly, one journalist reported that Kenny Boy thinks Fastow is a thief.

Seriously, I do agree with you whole heartily about what dominates the publics "conventional wisdom." Corporations are ruthlessly controlling our destiny.