As part of a stepped-up Capitol Hill investigation into the financial breakdown of the once-powerful Enron Corp., the chairmen of two House panels have called on the energy trader’s outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, to turn over audit records and to make certain employees available to committee staff for interviews. They also have asked former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling to be on hand for a visit.

The request to Andersen came in a letter Thursday to CEO Joseph F. Berardino, who one day earlier had told a joint House subcommittee hearing that Enron may have committed “illegal acts” prior to seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month. He testified that Andersen’s “audit team was not provided critical information” on one of Enron’s off-balance sheet partnerships, which required outside investors to provide at least 3% of the value of the partnership.

The letters from Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. James Greenwood (R-PA), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, come on the heels of similar correspondence to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay and former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. A House Energy spokeswoman said that neither Lay nor Fastow has responded yet to the Dec. 7 requests.

Fastow, who many believe was the central figure in Enron’s rapid deterioration, failed to show up at the SEC Wednesday to answer questions, forcing the agency to seek a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, to require him to appear.

Tauzin’s committee has asked specifically to interview by Dec. 21 David Duncan, Andersen’s partner-in-charge of the Enron account, as well as Andersen employees who worked on audits of Enron from 1997 to the present. The interviews are in preparation for hearings on Enron that the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold in January.

The committee also has called on Andersen to turn over stacks of financial and audit records and correspondence that was traded between Andersen and Enron during the past four years. Andersen supplied the SEC with similar data and records after being subpoenaed.

In a letter sent to Skilling Tuesday, the committee asked the former boy wonder at Enron to be available for an interview by no later than Dec. 21, but it did not request any records that he might have in his “possession or control” pertaining to the financial dealings of Enron.

In a related development, the Senate Commerce Committee announced it plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to examine the collapse of Enron. The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC), is expected to take a broad look at the financial debacle. It did not yet have a list of the witnesses to be invited to testify.

Also on Capitol Hill, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has set up an “Enron Tip Line” to receive information on “fraud, mismanagement, self-dealing and improper political activities” of the Houston-based energy trader. At the urging of Waxman, the Special Investigations Division of the Government Reform Committee, the chief investigative panel for the House, also is carrying out an investigation into allegations of misconduct on Enron’s part.

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