Ex-Enron CEO Skilling faces sentencing Monday

Houston, Oct 22: Jeffrey Skilling's day of reckoning comes tomorrow, when a US judge will sentence the former Enron Corp. chief executive for crimes that led to the fall of the one-time energy trading giant.

He could receive 20 to 30 years in prison and face millions of dollars in forfeitures.

''I think we're going to see a major-league sentence,'' white-collar crime expert Kirby Behre said.

In May, a jury convicted Skilling, 52, of 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors as Enron skyrocketed on false profits in the 1990s and then collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001.

Skilling was tried and convicted with the company's former chairman Kenneth Lay but he will be sentenced alone. Lay died of a heart attack on July 5 and his convictions have been voided because he died before he could be sentenced or appeal.

The sentencing, the climactic event in a scandal that came to symbolize a dark era in US business, will be watched closely by investors who lost billions of dollars and employees and retirees who lost their jobs and life savings.

Skilling is ''the highest-profile person left in all those big-name scandals ... the last step in years of heavy investigation of corporate America,'' said Behre, a former prosecutor now in private practice in Washington.

During the trial, Skilling was fingered as the hard-driving, short-cut-taking architect of a firm gone bad. Witnesses said he falsely inflated earnings by having chief financial officer Andrew Fastow stash debt and losses in off-the-book deals and lied about Enron's performance.

Skilling spent seven days on the stand denying guilt and promising to fight the charges for the rest of his life.

'A BAD BUSINESSMAN'

Many employees consider him a liar and a cheat.

''The man just totally destroyed our corporation,'' said retiree Charles Prestwood, due to speak at the sentencing. ''He didn't tell us the truth. ... He was just a bad businessman.'' US District Judge Sim Lake, acting under a federal victims rights law, invited victims to submit letters if they did not want to speak. About 50 did so.

Lawyers for employees who collectively lost more than 1 billion dollar in savings plans plan to speak. ''Their lives have been shattered in ways that most Americans are fortunate to have never experienced,'' they wrote in a letter seeking restitution.

They said they understand Skilling lacks the funds for full repayment but seek ''an orderly process for disposing of Mr Skilling's assets that allows for the maximum recovery.'' The Enron Task Force estimated Skilling's forfeitable gains at 66 million dollar, including his luxurious Houston home and at least 50 million dollar in securities.

Although many want the maximum penalty, a friend of the court brief from a law professor questioned the disparity between plea-bargained sentences -- six years for Fastow, for example -- and longer sentences given in trials.

''Our system encourages guilty pleas,'' wrote law professor Margareth Etienne of the University of Illinois. ''But a trial penalty -- a punishment for exercising Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights -- would clearly be unconstitutional.'' Skilling's lawyer, Dan Petrocelli, has asked that his client be allowed to remain free on bond pending appeal or to surrender January 2 or at least no earlier than November 27, after the Thanksgiving holiday.

REUTERS