Remember him? Well, this article sums up the current status of the Bush DOJ investigation into the men who wrecked the American economy...
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intID=378505Chief executives in trouble might elude prosecution
Daily Herald Reports
Posted 8/17/03
More than a year after the two biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history wiped out billions of dollars in assets and workers' pensions at WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp., the chief executives who led those companies remain free of criminal charges.
Bernard Ebbers, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling may never face prosecution, according to former federal prosecutors and securities lawyers.
Federal prosecutors are still investigating Ebbers, the former milkman and bouncer from Alberta, Canada, who over 17 years transformed a small discount telephone company into WorldCom, the second-biggest U.S. long-distance service.
The former chief executive officers of Enron - Lay and Skilling - are also still under investigation, 19 months after the world's largest energy trader collapsed owing $67 billion to creditors.
"There is a definite sense that the people most responsible will ultimately never be charged," said Robert A. Mintz, a former assistant U.S. attorney and now a partner at the Newark, N.J., law firm McCarter & English.
(snip)
Making any kind of fraud case is difficult because "the mission is to prove someone knew that there was some sort of fraudulent transaction going on and knew that they were doing wrong," said the U.S. attorney in New York, James Comey, who is investigating WorldCom. "It's all about proving what is in their head."
Will Thomas, director of the Corporate Accountability Project of the Washington-based Gray Panthers, a social-action and lobbying group, said "It's unconscionable that charges haven't been brought at this point" against Ebbers. "Clearly there is enough evidence at this point."
Marcel Kahan, a securities law professor at New York University School of Law, disagreed, saying that evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the three former executives isn't so clear- cut.
"The question is: If the financial statements are fraudulent, who is responsible for it and what do prosecutors have to show to prove that the CEOs of these companies were in rather than out?" said Kahan. "It's entirely plausible in both of these cases that the prosecutors just don't have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt."They are going to walk, folks :mad:
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