One of the bit players in the Enron Corp. melodrama was sentenced to two years probation last week for filing false income tax returns. Lawrence Lawyer, 38, who had once worked for Enron Broadband Services, faced up to three years in prison for failing to report $79,469 to the Internal Revenue Service. Lawyer reportedly received the money over four years beginning in 1997 from ex-Enron executive Michael Kopper in what the prosecutors had called a kickback scheme related to RADR, one of Enron’s dubious special purpose entities.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, who passed the sentence in a 30-minute hearing in Houston, said that if it hadn’t been for the controversy caused by Enron, Lawyer’s case probably would not have made it to a courtroom. Hoyt imposed no fines; Lawyer could have been fined up to $250,000. Hoyt said Lawyer’s payment of the taxes owed and a donation Lawyer made to an ex-Enron employee fund with the fraudulent money he was paid were adequate restitution.

Lawyer pleaded guilty in November 2002 and agreed to cooperate with the Enron Task Force (see NGI, Dec. 2, 2002). He is one of 14 ex-Enron executives expected to be sentenced before the end of the year.

Also last week, three British bankers wanted in the United States on Enron-related fraud charges are one step closer to being extradited to Texas for trial after a European court refused to halt extradition proceedings. David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew are wanted in Texas on wire fraud for allegedly stealing $7.3 million from their former employer, Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc’s Greenwich NatWest Unit. The trio, who were the first to be criminally indicted in the Enron case, allegedly benefited through the sale of “Swap Sub,” one of Enron’s special purpose entities (SPE) put together by ex-Enron CFO Andrew Fastow (see NGI, July 1, 2002).

In trying to block extradition, the men have claimed that Britain’s arrangements with the United States are unfair. They also claim they will not get a fair trial in Texas, where Enron was headquartered. The European Court of Human Rights, which ruled on the extradition, said a ruling on the admissibility and merits of the case is still pending. In a letter to the three men’s London law firm Jeffrey Green Russell last Tuesday, the court said it saw no immediate cause to overturn the decision of the British courts to send the men to face trial in the United States.

©Copyright 2006Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.