Judge denies early prison release for wife of Enron finance chief

[rainbow4321]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D88EEI800.html


Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow, will serve her entire yearlong prison term for helping her husband hide tens of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten kickbacks from the government, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner denied a request from Lea Fastow's attorney that she be released from prison before her sentence on a tax crime ends in July this year.

Hittner imposed the maximum prison term possible last year for a misdemeanor charge of filing a false tax form after months of legal wrangling. Lea Fastow wanted to plead guilty to a felony version of the same count in exchange for a term of five months in prison and five months home confinement.

In addition to his refusal to sign off on a 10-month term split between prison and home confinement that even prosecutors supported, Hittner declined DeGeurin's request to recommend that Lea Fastow serve her term in Bryan. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has final say over where inmates serve time, but the agency seriously considers guidance from judges.

[fooj]

1. Kenny-Boy is still running around free! Oh, the justice!

[Sporadicus]

2. The Only Thing This Judge is Accomplishing

is ensuring that lower-level functionaries at Enron and other miscreant corporations cannot count on plea bargains or other arrangements. The potential whistle-blowers are less likely to spill the beans if they have doubts about being given leniency. This judge, willfully or not, is giving aid & comfort to the top dogs at Enron et al.

[cosmicdot]

3. not to mention: Wendy Gramm

what she brought to the Enron Board room as former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Poppy Bush ... establishing loopholes during deregulation opening Enron's doors ... enron has just a massive footprint ... approx. 50 people in shrub's first coup term had ties to enron ... hardly hear a peep from people like Pug Winokur ... wha's'up, Pug? Thomas White et al.

"The senior Texas senator and his wife, a presidential appointee and eventual Enron board member, helped create what one observer famously called a "regulatory black hole." That newly deregulated energy market has been described as the fuel that propelled Enron into the seventh-largest company in the country."

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/2489039.htm?1c

~snip~A total of over 50 high-level Bush administration officials have been identified who once had meaningful ties to Enron. (See "Enron's Shadow Government," http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/pdf/shadowReport.pdf Also see Public Citizen's diagram of the relationships http://www.citizen.org/documents/EnronTree.pdf) ~snip~


from what I can see, Judge Hittner became a US District Judge in 1986, which would make him a Reagan/Ed Meese appointee ... from CitizenWorks' comprehensive recommendations for corporate reform webpage, a page word search finds his name mentioned:

"Another FCPA loophole was created by a recent court decision that made it legal for corporate executives to bribe a foreign official in order to reduce a company's tax burden or customs duties in that country. The decision, handed down by Judge David Hittner in the U.S. District Court in Houston in April, 2002 involved executives from American Rice, Inc., a U.S. corporation that is now bankrupt. (See "No Kidding: anti-Bribery Law Takes a Hit," Focus on the Corporation (column) by Robert Weissman and Russell Mokhiber, April 25, 2002 - available at http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2002/000114.html ("A startling decision handed down last week by a federal judge in Houston undermines the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and will make it difficult for weak and demoralized prosecutors to bring to justice U.S. corporate executives who openly bribe foreign government officials." )... I'm guessing that that may relate to enron and India = the Dabhol disaster http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=467 http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/01/25_india_1.html

http://www.citizenworks.org/corp/reforms.php

imo: he is corporate american friendly

just for fun google Harken and Enron
Harken was Enron in miniature
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-33,GGLD:en&q=Harken+and+Enron

[Coventina]

4. One word: Good

okay, can't resist more words:

She deserves to be in jail the rest of her life. All those crooks do. How many lives did they ruin?

[genieroze]

5. The problem is that the ones who really destroyed lives are running free

or promoted. Just like the drug war, users and small dealers get caught and all the kingpins get off scott free.

[Coventina]

6. From what I've read of the case she was no "small dealer"

She's getting off easy.

[genieroze]

7. But the ones who are really responsible get off scott free, travesty of

justice.