Capping off a year-long probe into Arthur Andersen’s role in the collapse of Enron Corp., the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday referred criminal charges to the Justice Department against the former Enron auditor’s in-house counsel, Nancy Temple, for allegedly lying last January to a congressional panel that was investigating the shredding of Enron documents.

In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Committee Chairman W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA) and five other House lawmakers from both sides of the aisle asked federal prosecutors to investigate whether Temple committed perjury and/or made “materially false statements” during her testimony before the panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Jan. 24. Temple was subpoenaed by the subcommittee.

“We are taking this action today because of its importance to the future integrity of congressional investigations,” the lawmakers wrote. “Witnesses that appear before Congress under oath must understand that there will be serious consequences for providing false and misleading testimony.”

Specifically, House lawmakers questioned Temple’s motives for an Oct. 12, 2001 e-mail, which she sent to Michael Odom, the risk management partner at Andersen’s Houston office. In the e-mail, she urged Odom to remind other members of Andersen’s Enron team of the need to comply with the firm’s document retention and destruction policies.

Lawmakers said they suspected Temple sent the e-mail because of fears of federal government investigations and lawsuits stemming from Enron’s damaging third quarter financial report, which was due to be released Oct. 16. But in her appearance before the House subcommittee, Temple denied these concerns prompted her e-mail, or that she knew about the shredding of Enron documents.

“By denying any discussion of potential litigation or document destruction, Ms. Temple sought to cloak her Oct. 12 e-mail in a false light of innocence, while concealing from the subcommittee similar efforts on her part to encourage the destruction of Enron-related documents by Andersen personnel,” Tauzin and others told the Justice Department.

“We urge you to vigorously pursue a criminal investigation into this matter.”

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