Conspiracy of Fools Read Online Free PDF

thing I’ve ever heard
.
    Sulentic broke in, looking Lay in the eye. “This was all just a misunderstanding, Ken. Lou and Tom really believed they were acting in Enron’s interest. I say we accept that mistakes were made, do what needs to be done to correct them, and move on to a profitable 1987.”
    Lay nodded grimly, seeming lost in thought. “This is obviously not the type of thing we want to have happen,” he said finally. “I understand what you were trying to do, but this is not the way to accomplish that.”
    Everything would be undone, Lay ordered. The transactions must be reversed and the off-books bank account shut down. And there would be other consequences. New controls, new oversight. This would not happen again.
    Lay sat back. “Does anybody else have anything?”
    “Well,” Woytek said, “I have a couple of problems”
    There was a short discussion about taxes and when the income would be reported. Heads nodded all around; they agreed Enron would report all of its 1986 profits in that year and pay the taxes. Woytek glanced at the traders. By raising such a tangential issue first, he seemed to have lowered their guard. They looked relaxed, confident.
    Time to move in for the kill.
    He held up the banking records from the memo. “But the real problem I have is that these bank statements you guys brought here today have been altered.”
    Woytek pulled out the second set of statements, describing the discrepancies. All the while, he stared at the traders, looking in their eyes for a flicker of shame or embarrassment.
None
. Just pure, controlled fury.
    “Now, wait a minute!” Borget snapped.
    “I can explain that,” Mastroeni interrupted.
    There was this trader, Mastroeni said, who had been fired at the end of 1985. After Enron paid out its bonuses for the year, the trader had hired a lawyer, threatening to sue the company if he didn’t receive a bonus.
    “There was so much going on at Enron at the time we didn’t want to starta new political problem internally,” Mastroeni said. “So we set up a closeout transaction for him and paid him a $250,000 bonus. But that was it.”
    “So why alter the records?” Woytek asked.
    Borget scowled. “We just didn’t want to cloud up this meeting with this stuff about bonuses. It has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. So we just took it out.”
    The back-and-forth continued for several minutes. Lay just watched, expressionless as he listened. Woytek wrapped up his interrogation and sat back, ready for the hammer to drop.
    Lay clasped his hands on the table. “Well,” he said finally. “Okay.”
    Oh, shit
, Woytek thought. These guys had just presented forged documents, and they’re going to get away with it?
    “I just don’t want this to happen again,” Lay continued. “If something like this comes up again, call us. We can handle this bonus situation. But these profits have got to be reported properly.”
    The meeting ended, and the traders, somehow, had survived. Everyone began filing out.
    “Dave, John, stay behind a minute.”
    The two auditors looked back at Lay, who was signaling for them to return to the conference table. They took their seats; Lay stayed silent until the office door closed.
    “Okay,” Lay said. “Go to Valhalla and look through their records. If I find out Borget is trading on inside information, on tips he’s getting from somebody in OPEC, I’ll make sure he never works in the industry again.”
    Woytek and Beard nodded, taking notes.
    “So, John,” Lay continued, “you go ahead and get that going, and Dave and I will run through some details.”
    Beard gathered his papers and strode out of the room. Lay leaned in, his eyes boring in on Woytek.
    “I want you to go up there and take your top people,” Lay said. “Make sure every penny of this money is returned to the company, even this bonus Borget was talking about. I want all of it back. And I want you to go today, now.”
    “All right,” Woytek