High Court will review Skilling case
WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court agreed to review former Enron Corp. chief executive Jeffrey Skilling’s conviction for leading the fraud that destroyed the world’s largest energy trader and made it a symbol of corporate deceit.
The high court said it will hear a Skilling appeal that might lead to a new trial. A jury concluded that Skilling and former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay used fraudulent accounting to deceive investors, analysts, and employees about the company’s deteriorating financial condition.
The decision to hear the case raises questions about a signature conviction in the government’s crackdown on corporate fraud in recent years. Skilling contends that, under a federal statute barring “honest services’’ fraud, prosecutors failed to show he was aiming to advance his own interests, rather than those of the company.
“Absent that limitation, the statute is nothing more than a common-law fiduciary-breach statute, impermissibly criminalizing whatever wrongful or unethical corporate acts a given prosecutor decides to attack,’’ Skilling argues in his appeal.
His appeal also argues that pretrial publicity prejudiced the jury and led to an unfair trial.
