October 20, 2002
Energy industry's dirty little details about to see light.
The
San Francisco Chronicle's David Lazarus
reports that Enron's former top trader, who has pleaded guilty to manipulating the California energy supply, is cooperating fully with investigators and is ready to disclose the full extent of the conspiracy.
Sources close to the matter say Timothy Belden, who previously ran Enron's trading office in Portland, Ore., is prepared to implicate a number of other industry players in what could shape up to be one of the biggest conspiracies in U.S. corporate history.
And that it extends to other companies such as Dynergy, and ChevronTexaco, their largest shareholder.
It also tells how they went about it, chilling details of blatant corporate greed.
Belden said he and his cronies would provide bogus data on how much juice was available at any given time to state utilities.
This would create the impression of congestion on power lines when none in fact existed, driving up demand and, better still, allowing Enron to charge an extra fee to relieve the congestion that wasn't actually there in the first place.
Enron also exported power generated in California to other states and then turned around and sold it back to us at a big markup as electricity generated elsewhere. ...
"We scheduled energy that we did not have, or did not intend to supply," Belden told a judge in San Francisco. "I did it because I was trying to maximize profits for Enron."
