SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Eighteen former directors of Enron Corp. have reached a $168 million settlement, including $13 million from some of their own pockets, with shareholders burned by the financial shenanigans that culminated in the company’s collapse.

The agreement announced late Friday requires 10 of the former Enron directors to contribute the combined $13 million from the profits that they reaped from selling company stock before Enron revealed it had been grossly exaggerating its sales and profits.

The debacle foreshadowed a wave of accounting scandals that sparked an overhaul of the country’s corporate governance practices.

The directors paying an unspecified amount of money are: Robert Belfer, Norman, Blake, Ronnie Chan, John Duncan, Joe Foy, Wendy Gramm, Robert Jaedicke, Charles LeMaistre, Rebecca Mark-Jubasche and Ken Harrison, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Other directors who are not personally paying money but are nevertheless covered by the settlement are: Paulo Ferraz-Pererira, John Mendelsohn, Jerome Meyer, Frank Savage, John Urquhart, John Wakeham, Charls Walker and Herbert Winokur.

None of the directors are admitting any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which still requires final court approval.

It represents the fourth major settlement negotiated by attorneys who filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Enron’s shareholders nearly three years ago. Including the latest settlement, the lawsuit so far has retrieved just under $500 million for shareholders.

Enron’s financial meltdown wiped out tens of billions in shareholder wealth.

The latest settlement doesn’t include two of Enron’s former chief executives, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, both of whom face criminal charges for their alleged misconduct leading up to the company’s late 2001 collapse. Andrew Fastow, who has pleaded guilty to engaging in illegal conspiracy while he was Enron’s chief financial officer, also is not a part of the settlement.

Enron’s shareholders are still seeking damages from a long list of other prominent defendants, including major banks and brokerages such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., and Credit Suisse First Boston for playing an alleged role in Enron’s skullduggery.


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