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Incriminating Videos Haunt Enron Executives

Alex Gibney, DirectorThe documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,'' features Jeff Skilling in a skit mocking company accounting methods that were used to hide debt off the books.

"We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting,'' Skilling says."If we can do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line.''

Enron commissioned hundreds of videotapes, some of which were used in the documentary. Others have been used in the Enron Broadband Services trial, which is in progress. Still others may provide incriminating evidence at the January 2006 accounting fraud trial of Skilling, Ken Lay and Rick Causey.

"There's a lot that hasn't surfaced yet,'' said Alex Gibney, the documentary's director."Some of the stuff that is still out there is apparently not to be believed.''

1,800 hours of Enron videotapes, gleaned from more than a decade of company meetings, are available for prosecutors and defense attorneys to dramatize dry testimony about Enron's complex off-the-books partnerships and mark-to-market accounting techniques. Investors and company pension funds suing Enron's banks and former executives for fraud may also use the tapes. The Enron executives' tendency to parody their business practices may put them in deep trouble.

"If I had that available to me, I would look for any way to use it,'' said former federal prosecutor Steven Peikin."It's a rare situation in a white-collar case.'' Peikin, now with the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, successfully prosecuted former Credit Suisse First Boston banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction-of-justice charges.

Lisa Monaco, a prosecutor in the Enron Broadband case, declined to comment on the importance of the videotapes to the government's case. Andrew Weissmann, director of the U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force, which is prosecuting Lay and Skilling, also declined to comment on the Enron videotapes.

Tony Canales, lawyer for ex-Enron Broadband Services' senior vice president Scott Yeager, ordered a copy of "every piece of Enron Broadband video'' to defend his client, he said. To do that, Canales contacted Beth Stier, owner and sole employee of Houston-based Innovision Communications Inc., a video- production business that taped hundreds of Enron employee meetings, analyst presentations, and training and recruiting videos. Stier began videotaping most of Enron's corporate video productions in 1989 and warehoused all of it.

Gibney wouldn't confirm how he acquired some of the clips used in his movie, which include former CFO Andrew Fastow pitching his now-notorious off-the- books partnerships to a group of bankers.

Another clip that might become key evidence at Skilling and Lay's trial is one of Lay addressing Enron employees in late 2001, as the company was hurtling toward filing the second largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, wherein Lay says that management acted ethically, and he promises that Enron will survive the crisis. He then reads from a question card submitted by an employee in the audience.

"I would like to know if you are on crack?'' Lay reads, smiling faintly. "If so, that would explain a lot. If not, you may want to start, because it's going to be a long time before we trust you again.''

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