Corporate media swamps us with Michael Jackson while this trial gets almost no attention. The trial of his former Enron Broadband bosses may be 2,400 miles away in the desert heat of Houston, but Barry Lavine and his former Enron Corp. co-workers are watching every step.
Since the trial opened April 18, they’ve heard everything from testimony that the company knowingly violated strict accounting rules in a project with Blockbuster Video to an admission from ex-Portland division head Ken Rice that he lied about the network’s abilities to gain “credibility” on Wall Street.
“It’s fascinating in a sort of macabre way,” said Lavine, who was a programmer at Enron and now trades observations with about 50 former co-workers on an ex-Enron employee e-mail list.
Five former executives of Enron Broadband are accused of pumping up the stock price by exaggerating the company’s fledgling technology. Unlike their employees, who lost thousands of dollars in retirement money when Enron went bankrupt, the executives sold millions in stock and now own everything from property in Kona, Hawaii, to stock in Microsoft Corp.
. . .
“It depends on who the jurors want to believe,” Lavine said. “The technical issues that have to be decided are so nebulous, it makes it difficult. It really comes down to if these defendants had the ruthlessness to lie and cashed in so many millions of dollars.”
. . .
The trial, in U.S. District Court in Houston, is expected to last until early July.
http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=30082
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
