Sorry, I Wasn't Around

Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling took a trip to Tanzania for three weeks with his son and brother in the summer of 2000 and embarked on a rafting trip in August 2001, just after he resigned from the company.

Both trips have turned out to have been propitiously timed for Skilling. To wit:

* On April 5, Max Hendrick, a lawyer for Vinson & Elkins -- Enron's outside law firm in Houston -- testified that the first meeting he had with Enron on company insider Sherron Watkins's "whistleblower" memo was more than a week after Skilling left the company. Hendrick, who helped run the investigation of Watkins's claims, testified that he never talked to Skilling about Watkins's concerns that Enron could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals," even though everything she mentioned in the memo happened on Skilling's watch.

* On April 6, former Enron general counsel James Derrick testified that the only time Enron's outside accountanting firm, Arthur Andersen, refused to sign off on an audit of Enron was during the Vinson & Elkins investigation of Watkins's memo, an investigation that began after Skilling left the company.

* Also on April 6, Derrick testified that when he and Enron founder Kenneth Lay decided to launch an investigation of the claims in the Watkins memo, not only had Skilling left the company, he was on a rafting trip and "physically unavailable."

* On Tuesday of last week, Skilling said he didn't monkey with Enron's second-quarter 2000 earnings release to raise profits, as the government alleges, at least partly because he was on vacation in Africa. At one point, he testified, Skilling rented a satellite phone. The phone held a charge for about 20 seconds, Skilling joked from the stand, long enough to dial a number. The phone was used only once, when his son called his girlfriend. Skilling did not check in with the company from Africa, he testified.

* On Wednesday of last week, Skilling testified that he could not have made what prosecutors allege was a critical edit in a press release about earnings at Enron Broadband meant to hide losses. When the change was made, Skilling testified, "I was miles away from civilization in" ...you guessed it... "Tanzania."

By Frank Ahrens |  April 16, 2006; 12:15 PM ET  | Category:  Sidebars
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