Ex-Enron Execs Financial Scandals. Former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, his wife and seven other former executives have been charged in a superseding indictment for actions relating to the firm’s financial scandals, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Fastow, who was indicted last year on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, was named in a new 109-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Houston.
The new indictment also charges former Enron corporate Treasurer Ben Glisan and former finance executive Dan Boyle with securities fraud, insider trading, falsification of Enron’s accounting records, tax fraud, and self-dealing.
The grand jury also returned a 218 count superseding indictment expanding charges relating to Enron’s failed Internet division, Enron Broadband Services.
“Indictments today are a significant milestone in our unabated efforts to expose and punish the vast array of criminal conduct related to the collapse of Enron Corporation,” said Larry Thompson, Deputy Attorney General who heads DOJ’s Corporate Fraud Task Force. “The indictments do not end by any means our investigation, and the investigation is active and ongoing,” he added.
fraud and insider trading
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an amended civil complaint against five out of the seven former broadband executives, charging them with fraud and insider trading. The market regulatory body accused the five men of reaping more than $150 million in unlawful profits.
The SEC already charged two other EBS executives, Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz, with falsifying records and quarterly reports for a sham transaction.
Enron charges are now a family affair
DOJ’s Thompson declined to get into details about Lea Fastow’s indictment. The former assistant treasurer at Enron walked into the Internal Revenue Service office in Houston with her husband early Thursday and surrendered.
Ken Rice, the EBS chief, Glisan and four other division executives arrived at the Houston FBI office within a half-hour Thursday morning and did not speak to reporters.
Boyle was the first to turn himself in at the FBI office.
“Prosecuting this guy is like prosecuting the piano player in a whorehouse,” Boyle’s attorney Bill Rosch said after arriving with his client.
The other former EBS executives who surrendered Thursday were Joseph Hirko, Kevin Hannon and Scott Yeager. A fifth former EBS executive, Rex Shelby, was expected to turn himself in at a later date due to a family emergency.
The seven who surrendered Thursday were expected to be taken from the FBI office to the Houston federal courthouse for initial appearances.
The latest government indictments brought the number of individuals charged in the Enron case to 19, with six of those already entering guilty pleas.
The government investigation began after Enron collapsed in 2001 in one of the biggest bankruptcies in U.S. history.
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