Enron’s sins continue to haunt.
Newly released information about the company’s dealings show that it was mob-like in its organization, disregarded human welfare and engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud electricity consumers.
The company planned, well before the electricity shortages that struck California in 2000 and 2001, to create a crisis and manipulate demand without regard for the well-being of people living in California or for the law.
At the same time, Enron executives took their deregulation traveling circus around the country, trying to sell other states on California-style changes that would have opened more markets up to the company’s unscrupulous behavior.
One telephone conversation, revealed along with other new information late last week, illustrates the point. An Enron trader, known so far only as Bill, tells the manager of a power plant to find a reason to shut down. The next day, the plant went off-line for several hours, and rolling blackouts hit southern and central California, leaving about 500,000 homes and businesses without power.
During that time, former California Gov. Gray Davis, along with environmental policies that made it difficult to build new power generating plants, were blamed for the energy crisis and skyrocketing electricity prices. In fact, we now know that it was careful and calculated manipulation by Enron that manufactured the crisis.
Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling have been charged with conspiracy and fraud. The government contends they concealed company debt to artificially boost revenue. Both Lay and Skilling have pleaded not guilty.
Five people from Enron and Merrill Lynch have been convicted of conspiring to inflate the company’s earnings.
Enron is essentially dead. It’s under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and is in the process of being liquidated. But the people behind this company’s activities are still around. The millions of electricity consumers who have been cheated deserve a full accounting of how they were swindled and by whom.
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