Is Enron back? If it’s a joke, some former employees aren’t laughing
HOUSTON– There appears to be an elaborate parody behind an attempt to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified America’s worst corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001.
If the return is comical, some former employees who lost everything in the collapse of Enron are not laughing.
“It’s a pretty sick joke and it discredits the people who worked there. And why would you even want to bring it up again? said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented employees in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Here’s what you need to know about Enron’s history and the alleged attempt to bring it back.
Enron, once the nation’s seventh-largest company, filed for bankruptcy protection on December 2, 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing companies appear profitable. The collapse of the energy company left more than 5,000 people unemployed and lost more than $2 billion in employee pensions. The aftershocks were felt throughout the energy sector.
Twenty-four Enron executivesincluded former CEO Jeffrey Skillingwere convicted for their role in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay had his convictions overturned after he died of heart disease following his 2006 trial.
On Monday — the 23rd anniversary of the bankruptcy filing — a company billing itself as Enron announced in a press release that it would relaunch as a “company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” It also posted a video on social media, advertised on at least one billboard in Houston and took out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle
In the minute-long video full of generic corporate jargon, the company talks about ‘growth’ and ‘rebirth’. It ends with the words: ‘We’re back. Can we talk?”
In an email, company spokesman Will Chabot said the new Enron was not doing interviews yet, but “We will have more to share soon.”
There are signs that the comeback is a joke.
The “terms of use and sale” on the company’s website states that “the information on the website about Enron is a First Amendment protected parody, constitutes performance art and is for entertainment purposes only.”
Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show that College Company, an Arkansas-based LLC, owns the Enron trademark. The co-founder of College Company is Connor Gaydos, who helped create a conspiracy theory claiming that all birds are actually government drones.
Peters said she and several other former employees are angry and believe the restart was “in bad taste.”
“If it’s a joke, it’s rude, extremely rude. And I hope they realize it and apologize to all Enron employees,” Peters said.
Peters, 74, says she still works in information technology because “I lost everything at Enron, so my Social Security doesn’t always take care of the things I need to do.”
“The collapse of Enron has taught us crucial lessons about business ethics, responsibility and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Enron’s legacy was the workers in the trenches. Let Enron be buried,” she said.
But Sherron Watkins, Enron’s former vice president of corporate development and the key whistleblower who helped expose the scandal, said she had no problem with the joke because comedy “usually helps us focus on an uncomfortable historical event that we prefer to ignore. .”
“I think we use past scandals to teach new generations what can go wrong at big companies,” said Watkins, who still speaks at colleges and conferences about the Enron scandal.
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This story has been corrected to correct the spelling of Ken Lay’s first name, which was misspelled as “Key.”
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