Lay And Skilling Guilty
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in LawHOUSTON (CNNMoney.com) - Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.
Skilling was found guilty on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on eight counts of insider trading.
Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud.
If you’ve ever seen the documentary, ‘Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room’, you know how ridiculously guilty these guys are. Horribly, horribly guilty.
I hope they’re in jail for the rest of their lives.
CORRECTION: I know some will see this as a Freudian slip, but the original title was “DeLay And Skilling Guilty”. Heh. Well, obviously it was a mistake. However, the Skilling half was right. Heh.
In any event, DeLay is still going to have his day in court, and if he’s found guilty, he shouldn’t spend his life in jail as Lay and Skilling should. In fact, I don’t know that he should do any time at all given the allegations. But that’s all in the future and not up to me.
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May 25th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Skilling and Lay are a couple of old dirty bastards, and although they will get a hefty sentence, the jail they will go to will be far from what they deserve.
These two jackholes ruined hundreds of lives and that can’t be rectified by jailtime.
May 25th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Me guess is that they get considerable time and be sentenced to an honor camp at one of federal pens. Its much less restrictive in terms of movement and safer.
It is too bad that such a shitty peice of federal legislation had come out this. Sarbane-Oxley is the kind of dysfunctional law created when there is mad, emotional rush to do something, anything.
Let me just throw this out there: I feel for Lay’s and Skilling’s families, just as I feel for their victims.
May 25th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I can understand why, but I think you meant Lay and Skilling, not DeLay and Skilling. Its hard to keep your rich guy criminals straight.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I think you mean Lay, not Delay.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
Wishful thinking, no doubt. Or maybe he’s been reading Truthout again.
May 25th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Mark-to-market accouting has to be amongst the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of - it’s akin to asking your dad for the whole summer’s allowance in January because you’ve decided to mow the lawn all summer…
May 25th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
If only they not only got jail for life, but they (and their families) were forced to make such restitution as they could. Leaving them destitute. Now that would approximate justice. but likely the families will get to keep a bundle, while those defrauded by Enron get nada.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Thanks for the catch. I said the same thing to a colleague today, and he corrected me.
Haha, well, I didn’t blog about the Rove Truthout story, now did I?
May 25th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Honestly, Justin, I have to say I’ve done that myself, though not in writing. Not so difficult to to do … .
May 26th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Pooh - as I understanding it mark-to-market is a tax election for traders in which at the years end the traders values his/her holdings on the current market value. I did some research on this because this kind of stuff interests me and I’m more or less ignorant on accounting and tax stuff. Apparently this is good for day-traders, because it is less of hassle than going back and accounting for the days they made a hundred trades. Using M2M the income is considered ordinary income and not capital gains. I would really appreciate an education of this topic if anyone can provide?