Lay faces 45 years for the conviction - Skilling 275 years.

Update: Skilling has been found not guilty on some insider trading charges related to the case but still guilty on all counts of conspiracy and fraud. Lay was not charged with insider trading.

Sentencing on September 11.

Former Enron bosses found guilty

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Mark Tran and agencies

Thursday May 25, 2006

Guardian Unlimited

A jury today found Kenneth Lay, the founder of Enron, guilty on all six counts of fraud and conspiracy in one of the biggest financial scandals in US history.

The jury of eight women and four men also found the company's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, guilty of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed, but that's the way the system works," Skilling said in a brief comment to reporters.

Enron's collapse came to symbolise the excesses of the dotcom era.

Together with subsequent Wall Street scandals - encompassing the even bigger collapse of WorldCom - the Enron case paved the way for legislation on tighter corporate governance and accounting rules.

However, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which followed the scandal, has led to complaints of too much red tape from US companies.

The legislation has been cited as the reason for many foreign companies preferring to list on the London Stock Exchange instead of in New York.

The defendants awaited today's verdict outcome away from the federal courthouse in Houston - Lay at his nearby office and Skilling in his legal team's "war room" across the street.

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[ 25 May 2006: Message edited by: Jimmy Brogan ]

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"Lou Pai also had a legendary fondness for strippers, and was a frequent habitue of a Houston topless club called Rick's Cabaret. It is there that Pai, who was married and had two children, met Melanie Fewell, with whom he began an affair that lasted for years and produced an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, it is this relationship that prompted his 2000 divorce, whose settlement required the highly fortuitous unloading of most of his Enron stock before the price began to tumble. This scenario has insulated Pai from charges of insider trading. 'He's the only guy who's ever been lucky to get divorced,' says Deborah Jeffrey of Zuckerman Spaeder, Pai's Washington attorney."

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[ 26 May 2006: Message edited by: bittersweet ]

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Lay, co-convict Jeff Skilling and Enron did not act alone. They connived with half a dozen other power companies and a dozen investment banks to manipulate both the stock market and the electricity market. And though their co-conspirators have now paid $3 billion to settle civil claims, the executives of these other corporations and banks get a walk on criminal charges.

Furthermore, to protect our President's boardroom buddies from any further discomforts, the Bush Justice Department, just days ago, indicted Milberg, Weiss, the law firm that nailed Enron's finance industry partners-in-crime. The timing of the bust of this, the top corporation-battling law firm, smacks of political prosecution -- and a signal to Big Business that it's business as usual.

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[ 28 May 2006: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]