Enron

When former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling was sentenced last week to more than 24 years in prison for his role in the company's 2001 collapse, it was a reminder of how the Enron scandal forced changes in government's oversight of corporate America. In the wake of that scandal, Congress strengthened securities laws in 2002 to protect investors and markets from future financial disasters. Unfortunately, powerful corporations are challenging these laws in bitter legal disputes across the country.

HOUSTON -- Former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison yesterday for his role in the company's 2001 collapse. His sentence is one of the longest prison terms to arise from the recent era of corporate scandals. Skilling, who was convicted in May on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors, could have received 24 to 30 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. "Mr. Skilling and his attorneys argue that the guideline range would be tantamount to life in prison," U.S. District Judge Simeon Lake said before pronouncing sentence.

A federal judge wiped out yesterday the criminal conviction of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth L. Lay, ruling that his death July 5 denied him the chance to appeal a Houston jury's fraud and conspiracy verdict. The ruling in Houston by U.S. District Judge Simeon Lake, who presided over the 16-week trial in the spring, will make it tougher - though not impossible - for prosecutors and private plaintiffs who are trying to recover money from Lay's estate, legal experts said. The government could still pursue its claim in civil court, but it would have to compete with any other litigants pursuing Lay's estate.

When Richard D. Kinder left Enron Corp. 10 years ago, he walked away with a pipeline business that didn't fit into the flashy company's vision for building the energy trader of the future. Yesterday, the company that Kinder and his partners built from Enron's castoffs said it would go private in a buyout valued at $14.6 billion. If approved by shareholders, the acquisition of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. by an investment group led by Kinder and other senior executives would be the third-biggest leveraged buyout ever.

NATIONAL Enron founder Lay dies Kenneth L. Lay, the founder of Enron Corp. who ascended to the pinnacle of American business only to tumble into disgrace, died yesterday in Aspen, Colo., while awaiting a judge's sentencing this fall that could have sent him to prison for decades. He was 64. pg 1a FDA approves AIDS drug The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first 3-in-1 anti-retroviral pill for use by the U.S.-sponsored plan for AIDS treatment. The White House's acting global AIDS coordinator said Tuesday the pill should greatly improve treatment for AIDS patients in poor countries.

HOUSTON -- The death early yesterday of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth L. Lay complicates the federal government's effort to close the books on one of its most ambitious corporate-fraud prosecutions. Lay, who died at age 64 of a massive heart attack at a rented Colorado vacation home near Aspen, was found guilty of conspiracy and fraud by a federal jury in May, along with former Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey K. Skilling. Their trial resulted from the far-reaching scandal at the Houston energy company, in which more than 4,000 jobs and billions of dollars in stockholders' investments disappeared.

HOUSTON -- Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling will next be put under a microscope by a federal probation officer as their lawyers try to persuade the judge the convicted felons didn't cost shareholders a penny - or at least not many pennies. Sentencing in the federal courthouse has its own nearly indecipherable procedures. They are so complicated that experienced lawyers often disagree about what will likely happen. A probation officer will be assigned to look at everything from the men's mental health and family history to financial assets and losses they caused.

Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling tried to present themselves as clueless victims in the Enron collapse, but the jurors who convicted them yesterday in Houston weren't convinced. Could the two executives have been half-right, though? Preposterous as it is to argue that others, inside or outside the company, took advantage of them, they were victims nonetheless - victims of their own bad judgment and of their swagger and belief in their own power. They were victims of their overweening self-regard, of the notion that they weren't merely the smartest guys in the room (to crib from the title of a book about Enron)

Two decades ago, when Enron Corp. was a fledgling natural gas pipeline, Barry Minkow was busy bilking Wall Street and investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars with his ZZZZ Best Co., a sham of a carpet-cleaning company that never made a profit. Minkow eventually reformed himself as a minister and corporate-fraud investigator, but if he were still a financial crook, "I'd run a carpet-cleaning hedge fund," he offers. "Or you go offshore, baby. It's the latest twist in investment fraud.