Taking Enron to Task--WaPost

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/17/AR2006011701554.html?referrer=email

Taking Enron to Task
Government's Prosecutors Are Ambitious, Driven and Accustomed to Winning

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; Page D01

A disabled woman lay dead in her Chicago apartment. No videotape, no gun, no fingerprints.

For days, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean M. Berkowitz puzzled over the circumstantial evidence. He examined ballistics, phone records, stray papers. With no hard evidence to go on, he won the indictment of a doctor, who ultimately was sentenced to death for killing a patient to keep her quiet about Medicare fraud.

Berkowitz is "not afraid of taking on a difficult case," said former colleague David Hoffman, now Chicago's inspector general.

Enter Enron Corp.

Berkowitz, 38, is the third and -- presumably -- final director of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, which is designed to get to the roots of fraud at the Houston energy trader that collapsed in 2001.

He and a small group of government lawyers will be in the spotlight in the Jan. 30 trial of Enron's former leaders. The case is the capstone in the cleanup after an era of business misconduct that left investors billions of dollars poorer. The outcome could shape the public's -- and history's -- judgment of how effective it was.

"Enron defines the age of corporate fraud," Berkowitz said.





Extensive Article--Well worth the Read for Summary and Progress Report!