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Enron Corp. - University of California | Office of The President

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In addition to this income recognized from Project Tomas, the transaction also provided <strong>Enron</strong> with<br />

$95 million in tax savings in 98-01.<br />

797.29 <strong>The</strong>re is no doubt that both Bankers Trust and <strong>Enron</strong> were acting to artificially inflate<br />

<strong>Enron</strong>'s reported financial results. Indeed, the tax opinion prepared by the law firm Akin, Gump,<br />

Strauss, Hauer & Feld states that the <strong>Enron</strong> affiliate in the transaction "expects certain financial<br />

accounting benefits to be recognized on the consolidated GAAP financial statement in which it is<br />

included."<br />

Projects Renegade and Valhalla<br />

797.30 Projects Renegade and Valhalla were fraudulent tax schemes <strong>of</strong> a different kind, from<br />

the perspective <strong>of</strong> <strong>Enron</strong>'s role. Rather than being designed so that <strong>Enron</strong> could fraudulently achieve<br />

favorable tax benefits and earnings income, Projects Renegade and Valhalla were designed to enable<br />

Bankers Trust to achieve favorable tax benefits through sham transactions with <strong>Enron</strong>. For acting<br />

as the "other" party to these sham transactions for the benefit <strong>of</strong> Bankers Trust, <strong>Enron</strong> received<br />

millions <strong>of</strong> dollars in fees. <strong>Enron</strong> received approximately $17 million for its illegal and fraudulent<br />

actions in Projects Renegade and Valhalla, which went directly to its bottom-line; the bulk <strong>of</strong> it ($16<br />

million) artificially inflating <strong>Enron</strong>'s 00 and 01 financial statements. In both Projects Renegade and<br />

Valhalla, <strong>Enron</strong>'s role was that <strong>of</strong> an accommodation party (a strawman that acted not independently<br />

but to facilitate the transaction for the benefit <strong>of</strong> Bankers Trust).<br />

797.31 In 12/98, Bankers Trust promoted the concept <strong>of</strong> Project Renegade to <strong>Enron</strong>.<br />

Renegade involved a complicated and circular series <strong>of</strong> transactions by which Bankers Trust loaned<br />

$320 million to an <strong>Enron</strong> subsidiary, ECT Equity <strong>Corp</strong>oration, and then ECT contributed the bulk<br />

<strong>of</strong> that money to its subsidiary, Wiltshire Financial Assets, LLC, and then Wiltshire paid <strong>of</strong>f Bankers<br />

Trust's original loan. <strong>The</strong> transactions were nearly perfectly circular, but for an $8 million loan<br />

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