The Real Brains of Enron

I remember hearing the phrase "the smartest guys in the room" bantered about a few times during the trial of former Enron chiefs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

I'm not buying it. They were caught and convicted.

On the other hand, this guy has to have been the smartest man in the company:

Lou Pai is the real mystery man in the Enron scandal. A former executive of the energy trading firm, he cashed in an estimated $270 million in stock and left the company before it collapsed, divorced his wife, married an exotic dancer, bought an enormous piece of Colorado, sold it and then disappeared into obscurity.

I have a feeling Lay and Skilling wouldn't mind a little obscurity right about now. Or the exotic dancer, for that matter.

Down Memory Lane

As most of the nation has by now heard, former Enron CEOs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been found guilty in the jury trial that ended in Houston today. (Sentencing is set for September 11.)

Lay was convicted on all six counts against him in the trial with Skilling. Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts against him, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine.

Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate trial non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to Lay's personal banking.

What many across the country may not be aware of is that Ken Lay was involved in a far more dastardly scheme, years before the 2001 collapse of the energy giant:

...[I]n 1994, [Sheila] Jackson Lee (serving her third term as a member of the Houston City Council) defeated incumbent Congressman Craig Washington in the Democratic primary for the 18th Congressional District of Texas; a victory which assured her the seat itself, as the district is overwhelmingly Democratic. Washington had previously made powerful enemies, namely Houston's downtown power brokers (such as then-Enron Chief Kenneth Lay), by voting against congressional bills favoring NAFTA and NASA...

Irked by [what] they perceived as Washington's overt and aggressive liberalism, Lay and other conservatives first convinced then Councilwoman Jackson Lee to run against Washington, then put their sizable deep pockets behind her and her campaign, even though she was a Democrat.

Get a rope.