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Fastow: No proof of deals with Skilling
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-10 15:00
Enron Corp.'s former finance chief says he discussed improper deals with
former CEO Jeffrey Skilling that padded earnings to please Wall Street, but he
can't back it up with anything but his memory.
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| Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, center, is escorted to the federal
courthouse Thursday, March 9, 2006 in Houston for his third day of
testimony in the fraud and conspiracy trial of former Enron executives
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. [AP] |
Andrew Fastow, Enron's ex-chief financial officer and admitted liar, left
jurors to decide whether to take his word for it that he conspired with his
boss. He said he couldn't remember any documents that would corroborate his
incriminating recollections.
Fastow, 44, who pleaded guilty to scamming the company for millions while
orchestrating schemes to hide debt and inflate profits, underwent a second day
of intense cross-examination Thursday in the conspiracy and fraud trial of
Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay.
Lead Skilling lawyer Daniel Petrocelli finished with him, and lead Lay lawyer
Michael Ramsey is slated to question him on Monday.
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.
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.
Zeroing in on a copy of Fastow's handwritten record of profits that were
promised to partnerships he created to help Enron wipe debt from its books 锟斤拷
dubbed the "Global Galactic" 锟斤拷 Petrocelli sought to show the document as
meaningless.
Fastow has claimed that Skilling, who was chief operating officer in 1999
when the partnerships were created, made verbal "bear hugs" or promises to him
that the partnerships would lose no money on two deals noted on the document.
"We had side agreements, Mr. Petrocelli. That's how we did business," Fastow
said.
In the deals, a partnership dubbed LJM1 bought an interest in a troubled
Brazilian power plant in the third quarter of 2000, and another, called LJM2,
bought three power plants mounted on barges off the coast of Nigeria in June of
that year.
"I believe I would not have acquired the barges without that bear hug,"
Fastow said.
While Fastow said he wrote the Global Galactic to keep track of those deals
and others, it carries only his initials and those of Richard Causey, Enron's
former chief accounting officer.
Petrocelli asked whether there was "any piece of paper, any e-mail, any notes
written on the back of a business card, anything" that documented the
conversations with Skilling.
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