2 Enron executives sentenced
Two former Enron Corp. executives received sharply reduced sentences Friday after cooperating with prosecutors to help convict the architects of the biggest scandal in U.S. corporate history .
Michael J. Kopper, once the top lieutenant to former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew S. Fastow, was sentenced to three years and one month in prison. An hour later, Mark E. Koenig, the company’s former investor relations chief, received an 18-month sentence.
The men were also fined $50,000 that will be sent to a fund for victims of Enron’s collapse. Each man will be on probation for two years after he is released from prison.
Both men will remain free on bond until they have to report to prison, a process that usually takes four to six weeks.
Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. to cut the potential sentences because of their help. Kopper, 41, faced up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2002 to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Koenig, 51, who helped present the company’s false financial reports to investors, pleaded guilty in August 2004 to one count of aiding and abetting securities fraud, which carries up to 10 years in prison.
“I want to apologize to all the people who have been harmed by the Enron affair,” Kopper said before he was sentenced. “Families and employees suffered not just monetary failure but reputational failure. I am very deeply sorry for having participated in causing that.”
Koenig also apologized.
“I didn’t make the right choices in my last year at Enron. I am profoundly sorry for that,” said Koenig, whose wife and sons attended the sentencing.
Werlein told Kopper that his sentence had to reflect the seriousness of his crimes.
“The sentence is not imposed for the good things you’ve done the past few years,” he said.
Kopper was the first former Enron executive to plead guilty to charges stemming from the company’s collapse. He led federal prosecutors to Fastow, who in turn led them to Enron founder Kenneth L. Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling.
Fastow just began serving six years in a federal prison in Louisiana, and Skilling will begin serving a sentence of more than 24 years next month at a low- security prison in Minnesota. Lay’s convictions were wiped out with his death in July.
