Former Enron Accountant Strikes Plea Deal

[NashVegas]

HOUSTON (AP) -- Enron's former chief accounting officer, Richard Causey, has struck a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and will avoid going to trial with the fallen energy company's two top executives, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Causey, 45, agreed to testify against his former bosses, Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, in exchange for a much lesser prison sentence than he would receive if convicted on all counts. The trial is scheduled to begin next month.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051227/enron_causey.html?.v=2

Happy New Year, Ken!

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Good-bye, Kenny Boy

Say hello to Bernie Ebbers you soon-to-be-fucking-felon!

:-)

[bemildred]

2. I hope he has good bodyguards. nt

[Catherine Vincent]

3. I still say Ken Lay will get off.

Whether it be house arrest or no prison time.

[havocmom]

5. In the meantime, I hope they have at least pulled his passport!

A microchip transmitter under his hide might be a good idea too :evilgrin:

[acmavm]

16. bush** will do the presidential pardon thing n/t

[The Roux Comes First]

26. Come on now - he hardly remembers the guy! (eom)

[dogfacedboy]

33. Not if he knows what's good for him.

That could be VERY un-healthy for Bush. Politically, of course...

[warrens]

32. I dunno

The "I'm a really stupid billionaire who doesn't understand all this here high finance" defense doesn't seem to be working anymore.

[joeunderdog]

36. Some VERY high ranking criminals are getting deals here.

I'm wondering how many people are going to get lesser sentences under the premise of helping the prosecution. I mean, it's not like this guy had some tangential role in this heist. Guys like him are the crooks that the DA's try to prosecute with other people's testimony. Instead, he's getting a deal. Are they gonna cut everyone a deal for the sake of nailing KennyBoy? And then what if KennyBoy walks?

Call me cynical.

[Gato Moteado]

4. yeah, baby!

another repuke felon (i know, that's an oxymoron), kenny boy, going to prison.

2006 will be a bad year for chimpy and repukes in general.

[chaplainM]

15. I think, instead of "oxymoron," you actually mean, "pleonasm."

Repuke is not the opposite of felon.

[Gato Moteado]

20. ooops....yeah, my bad

i meant to say, it's redundant.

but i had a brain glitch for a moment.

[sam the dawg]

6. Doesn't matter

doesn't matter. pardons will be issued. people will walk.
probably there will be no convictions at all. causey will be dealt with.
remember schrushy walked. (PR and good ole boy in his case)
just the way it works. nothing new under the sun.

[catzies]

18. Welcome to DU, sam the dawg but for some that's not the only point

and where were you during the Whitewater headlines?

That was truly a case of turning-nothing-into-something. This is truly the opposite.

[Grateful for Hope]

7. This is such good news

Thanks for posting this.

[babylonsister]

8. The people in Houston who were so cheated are going

to be so happy to hear this!!! I'll hang around if I'm called to be on the jury. :evilgrin:

[Dinger]

9. Wonder If He'll Tell Who Murdered Clifford Baxter? nt

[DemoTex]

10. Sweet dreams tonight, Kenny-boy!

For the newer DUers, I used to work for Ken Lay in the pre-Enron days. I'd love to see Lay do time, but if they can stretch the trial and sentencing out past the 2006 elections, Lay will be pardoned. Bu$h owes Lay .. big time.

[tenshi816]

28. Ooh - you can't just say something tantalizing like that

and not say anything else! What was Kenny Boy like to work for?

Edited to ask a further question: If your experience of working for Ken Lay was in fact a positive one, what do you think happened to him along the way? When did the rot set in? Do you feel he turned to the dark side because of associating with bad and ruthless people, e.g. the Bush family? I'm really interested in what drove Lay to do what he did, and have often wondered if he was a good guy on the surface and treated his staff like crap kind of guy (in addition to everything else he got up to), or if he really was honest at one time, in the beginning maybe and changed because of the people he associated with. I know it's a complicated issue, but having worked for him, you probably have a lot of insight into Lay's character.

[DemoTex]

45. I was a corporate pilot for Lay (Learjet 25/55 and Lockheed JetStar II)

Lay's dad was a preacher and a nurseryman in Columbia, MO. Lay got a PhD in Econ (if my memory serves me correctly) at the U of Houston (not quite Ivy League, but I don't really care). Lay dumped his first wife. In fact, he had a friend of mine fly her to Pennsylvania in the Lear 25, to be locked up forever in a loony bin. A few weeks later he married his assistant from Florida Gas (who had followed Lay to Transco .. the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company). That was Linda, the current Mrs. Lay.

Compare to Robert and Georgette Mosbacher (Robert was Bu$h-1's Sec of Commerce), the Lay's were princely people. I often flew the Mosbachers, and they were the quintessential assholes.

However, I watched as Ken Lay became disenchanted with his high-level position at Transco under then-CEO Jack Bowen (his mentor from Florida Gas). Ken left Transco in 1985 (or so) for the CEO position at Houston Natural Gas. Within months, Ken Lay merged Houston Natural Gas (a pipeline company) with an Omaha pipeline company called InterNorth. The immediate result was ENRON.

In late 1986, I did a feature article on the Enron flight department for my then aviation magazine employer (I was editor-in-chief at the time). It was a 4500 word piece with pics and interviews with my old friend Ken Lay.

By 1986 Lay was buying Falcon Jets by the half dozen. The sales bells rang so often at the Dassault plant in SW France (authorizing Champagne for the production line), that one must wonder about the sobriety of the aircraft workers.

That brings us up to speed, superficially. I'll post much more about Ken and Linda (oh, I know her well too!) as the case progresses. Not that I'm teasing, what I promise has all been posted on DU by me before. If you want to see it, dig back into the archives to 5/2001 (that was when I first posted on DU!)!

Mac

[tenshi816]

47. Fascinating stuff!

I didn't know anything about Enron until the excrement hit the oscillating device in 2001 although my husband, who worked in corporate finance at the time, was very familiar with the company even though we're in England and he never had any dealings with Enron. Once he brought me up to speed, I became kind of obsessed with the Enron principals, particularly Lay and Skilling.

What I learned over time about Ken Lay's early life explained a lot to me about the kind of man he eventually became. It's such an old, old story, isn't it? Humble beginnings and great poverty combined with high intelligence and a burning desire to make something of himself - the kind of thing that made me wonder if he ever had a real moral compass when he was young, or was he always an amoral, ruthless, greedy, dishonest bastard. I guess we'll never know for sure about that, but I do know that I hope he spends many years wearing an orange jumpsuit.

I bet you could write a bestseller with what you know about the Lays (Linda seems like a real piece of work too). If you write it, I'll buy it.

[pompano]

11. I'll bet money....

...pardons fly faster than one can say, what?

I think Kenny Boy knows it to...reason for his arrogant, smug look all the time.

[AndyTiedye]

21. Pardons Won't Get Them Out of THIS Prison

The prison wing of the Peace Palace in the Hague

Bush** will pardon them all
When the Dems get back into power, we can turn them all over to the Hague for war crimes -- pardoned or not.


That includes Ken Lay, who was complicit in the whole Iraq invasion conspiracy from the beginning.
A pResidential pardon won't get them out of this prison.

[Oceansaway]

12. Touche !!..n/t

[cliss]

13. Heh he

Oh, I bet Kenny Boy is sweating right now. We all know what Mr. Causey is going to disclose....

Maybe that's why the Old Boy made a public appearance recently. He made some stupid pleading to Houston "businessmen" to recognize that he's in fact innocent. People thought that little display was pretty weird.

Richard Causey will tell everyone that all of the rotten things were hatched by

a) Andrew Fastow
b) Jeffrey Skilling and
c) Ken Lay

Now, Ken Lay walked away from that whole mess as a multi-millionaire, maybe even billionaire. His director's insurance policy alone was worth $446 million, which he cashed in by the way.

I'll bet you Lay is willing to share a little of that money with Causey......

[Bridget Burke]

31. Here's a good account of Ken Lay's appearance at the Houston Forum

Rewriting Acts I, II of Enron just a bit

By LOREN STEFFY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

OK, quiet, everyone! Places!

Let's get this right, people. We only have a month before the big show, and we have to make this dress rehearsal count.

Remember, Ken, you're speaking to the Houston Forum. It's a dignified audience. You used to be a part of it. These are your peeps, so play to the crowd.

Now, in the first scene, Ken, you enter through the back door and take your place on the dais. You'll be introduced as "Dr. Lay." Linda, you're at this first table. Sympathetic friends near the front.....

Either we stand up now and prove that Enron was a real company, a substantial company, an honest company ... or we will leave this horrific legacy shaped by others for someone else to sort out."

Oh, Kenny, that's pure gold, baby. I'm tearing up. I mean it, I'm feeling it. We're all in this together. It's not just you on trial, but everyone who worked at Enron, vicariously prosecuted through you. You're a genius.

Cue the lackluster applause. Cue the disgruntled audience members leaving early.

There's lots more.

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/3523022.html

[NashVegas]

44. Oh. Meow

Nice.

[Boredtodeath]

14. The republican crooks are falling like dominos!

Causey was always a better "catch" than Fastow. He did the dirty work at their command.......

So, let's see the list of republican crooks grows again:

Tom DeLay
Jack Abhramoff
Ken Lay
Jeff Skilling

Who's next? I hope Grover Norquist gets added to this list........

[greiner3]

42. Bob Ney! n/t

[lonestarnot]

17. Heh heh heh and another one bites the dust! Wooohooo. Sing like a bird

biatch!

[peacetalksforall]

19. I read your headline and a most satisfying smile spread across my room.

I visualize George and Dick, PNAC and the cabal encircled by victims and former partners with arrows of accusations being shot at them one by one, day after day.

All their crap will be exposed 'sooner, rather than later' ... IN THE COURTS ... where they belong. Let them take it to John Roberts and his heavily weighted not-so-supreme court. The people won't stand any more of their crimes. They will have to impose martial law and keep us inside our homes 24 hours a day us to keep from demanding jusstice ... IN THE COURTS ... by American Law, not PNAC and Federalist Society law.

[kskiska]

22. WP: Enron Executive Agrees to Plea Deal

Prosecutors Gain Witness Against Lay, Skilling

Wednesday, December 28, 2005; A01

Enron Corp.'s former chief accountant agreed to plead guilty today to criminal conduct that preceded the company's collapse into bankruptcy, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, sealing a deal that gives prosecutors another key witness against former chief executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling on the eve of their fraud trial.

Richard A. Causey, 45, who is facing more than two dozen criminal charges, is scheduled to appear in a Houston courtroom at 3 p.m. Eastern time today, according to court records. He reported directly to Skilling for years and participated with Lay on conference calls and analyst meetings in the weeks before Enron fell apart.

All three men had been scheduled to face trial Jan. 17, and the trio long had presented a united front. But eleventh hour negotiations with the Justice Department's Enron Task Force -- and the prospect of spending decades behind bars if he gambled at trial and lost -- ultimately proved persuasive for Causey, who had rejected previous government offers, the sources said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the impending trial.

The deal comes at a delicate time for Lay and Skilling, who are charged with leading a conspiracy to defraud investors by hiding debt and inflating profits at the Houston energy trading firm before its December 2001 collapse. They are the last and among the most eminent corporate executives to face trial in an era of scandal dating to the 1990s.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/27/AR2005122701173.html

[fooj]

23. Ruh Roh! Looks like Kenny-boy is in a world of hurt!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[spindrifter]

24. Will Either Kenny

or Skilling plead out?

[goforit]

25. Why has it taken so long?

[Lost4words]

29. because of a giant protection racket run by repukes.

[savemefromdumbya]

27. Another corruption item to be notched up for the GOP

[Supersedeas]

30. wonder if the POTUS will weigh in on Kenny Boy's innocence too?

[WhiteTara]

34. Yippy F*cking Skippy

Happy New Year. We are finally going to get a real trial for Kenny Boy. This will lead back to Heartless and Monkey Boy.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

35. "Dear Ken, Thank goodness you have such a young, beautiful wife..."

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay5.html

[centristo]

38. was he talking about her?

Or one of Kenny's mistresses?

[Bridget Burke]

43. Ken Lay divorced The First Mrs. Lay to marry his secretary...

They're still married. And her knowledge of his business probably means she'll get to keep the job.

Outside interests? Well, they say that whenever a man marries his mistress, a job opening is created.

[DemonFighterLives]

37. Carrie Johnson who wrote the Wapo piece was on MSNBC

The charges against Causey are supposed to come at 3:00 today.
Newsreader had to ask whether all of this would blow over and Carrie responded that that would be hard to imagine. "He is the cherry on top of the prosecution's sundae."
:dem:

:applause:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

39. I wonder when Kenny-boy intends to cut his deal....

...to testify against the folks that were present during Cheney's "energy meetings"?

[DemonFighterLives]

40. This whole den of thieves is attached at the hip

When we get to Gfy's energy meetings and the rape of Caleeefawneeyah by Kenny, cheney, and ahnold, we will really need to celebrate.

How can the defense need a couple more months because of the new plea deal? My God they've had 4 years to prepare for this.

Let the games begin!
:popcorn:

[greiner3]

41. Didn't someone once say;

'Kenny who?'

:rofl:

[gulliver]

46. Mt. St. Enron rumbling again.

Right about the same time Ken Lay's biggest political benefactor gives his State of the Union isn't it?