Houston Chronicle’s Enron coverage
So Kenny Boy and Darth Vader were finally brought to heel by a jury of their peers? I suppose there’s a message in there somewhere for an intellect more nimble than my own, but my intial reaction was simply one of gratitude. I was a contractor at Enron as the house of cards began to crumble. Many people that I knew and worked with lost their financial future in the space of a few short months. Some of these folks believed in Enron so completely, so wholeheartedly, that they had their entire retirement fund tied up in Enron. It made sense at the time, based on what they knew. Enron was a bold, nimble, push the edge of the envelope kind of company that was easy to believe in. Creativity and risk-taking was rewarded and valued, and a person who didn’t want to work in a conventional, stodgy, corporate environment could feel right at home. People who worked at Enron were committed- they worked hard, and the played hard. They weren’t just employees; these were people who were emotionally and financially invested in the future of Enron, because that represented their own future. These folks BELIEVED…and in the end they were used and exploited to satisfy the greed and avarice of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay.
A federal jury convicted former Enron chiefs Ken Lay on all counts and Jeff Skilling on most counts…marking the climax of one of the most notorious corporate scandals in U.S. history and nearly ensuring prison time for two of Houston’s best-known executives.
The jury heard 16 weeks of testimony and arguments and made its announcement early on its sixth day of deliberations. The eight-woman, four-man panel found Lay guilty of all six counts. They convicted Skilling on 19 of the 28 counts against him.
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake set a sentencing date of Sept. 11. The two men remain free on bond.
The irony of the sentencing date is what I find most delicious. It was on 9.11.01 that I watched events unfortunate on a TV monitor from my office at Enron. Little did I know then that 9.11 would mark a sort of watershed for Enron and it’s employees. Things had been deteriorating long before 9.11, but it seemed, at least in my mind, to become more evident and difficult to ignore post-9.11.
I suppose we should expect the inevitable appeals process that will last roughly until the end of time or the money runs out- whichever comes first. Eventually, though, Lay and Skilling will have to exchange their Armanis for prison-issue jumpsuits…and if there is any justice, they’ll be sent to somewhere other than Club Fed. The bottom line is that Skilling and Lay, with a lot of help from underlings, made certain that a lot of former Enron true believers will not have quite the retirement they’d dreamed of. These folks deserved better, but if the best they can hope for now is for Lay and Skilling to become someone’s “girlfriend”…well, it may be small consolation, but it is consolation nonetheless.
There is one question I’d like to see answered, though: What’s going to happen to the money that these two corporate greedheads stole from investors and employees? Sure, they’ll be in jail trying to fend off the attentions of Butch and Bruno, but will their families still be living like royalty? Will Linda Lay still be living the RIver Oaks lifestyle? In order for justice to truly be served, it would seem that as much of the ill-gotten gains as possible needs to be recovered and returned to the rightful owners. If that the Lay and Skilling families have to live in trailers in Bacliff, so be it. Perhaps it’s time they found out how the other half lives.
