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

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806. However, <strong>Enron</strong> could not find a legitimate buyer for the outside investor's interest<br />

in JEDI. So Vinson & Elkins along with <strong>Enron</strong> quickly formed a new entity called Chewco, which<br />

<strong>Enron</strong> and an <strong>Enron</strong> executive (Kopper) controlled, to buy the outside investor's interest in JEDI.<br />

Vinson & Elkins knew Chewco did not have an outside equity investor with a 3% stake – the<br />

minimum required to enable Chewco or JEDI to be treated as an independent third party.<br />

Barclays loaned some $240 million to JEDI (guaranteed by <strong>Enron</strong>) to allow it to do the deals with<br />

<strong>Enron</strong> necessary to artificially boost <strong>Enron</strong>'s reported results and also loaned the money to two<br />

straw parties to provide the funds for the "equity" investment in Chewco. But because the<br />

purported equity investors in Chewco were, in fact, "strawmen" for <strong>Enron</strong>, Barclays required<br />

Chewco to secretly guarantee the purported "equity" loans Barclays made to the two "strawmen"<br />

via a $6.6 million secret cash deposit with Barclays and <strong>Enron</strong> provided directly or indirectly the<br />

balance <strong>of</strong> the "equity" money. Had proper accounting procedures been followed, because there was<br />

no legitimate independent outside investor in Chewco, Chewco was required to have been<br />

consolidated with <strong>Enron</strong> and all <strong>of</strong> <strong>Enron</strong>'s 97 pr<strong>of</strong>its generated by transactions with JEDI would<br />

have been eliminated!<br />

807. By forming Chewco at year-end 97, <strong>Enron</strong> and Vinson & Elkins avoided a disaster<br />

by keeping <strong>Enron</strong>'s previously recorded pr<strong>of</strong>its from transactions with JEDI in place, thus inflating<br />

<strong>Enron</strong>'s 97 reported pr<strong>of</strong>its. Thus, Chewco/JEDI was not a valid SPE meeting the requirements<br />

for non-consolidation. Notwithstanding this, <strong>Enron</strong> did not consolidate Chewco/JEDI into<br />

<strong>Enron</strong>'s financial statements during 97-01 and used Chewco/JEDI to generate false pr<strong>of</strong>its from<br />

97 through 01, in transactions that Vinson & Elkins participated in structuring and provided false<br />

"true sale" opinions to facilitate. Chewco was now also positioned to serve as a controlled entity<br />

which <strong>Enron</strong> could use going forward with which to do non-arm's length transactions, which Vinson<br />

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