Sentenced

The former chief of Enron Corp.’s once-touted broadband unit and one of the defunct company’s top traders was sentenced Monday to 27 months in federal prison. Kenneth Rice, the last of 15 ex-Enron executives who pleaded guilty to various crimes, also was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and forfeit $13 million in cash and property to the government.

The former COO of Enron Corp.’s Internet division, Enron Broadband Services (EBS), was sentenced in Houston Monday to two years in federal prison.

Ex-Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling will be standing alone when he’s sentenced in Houston on Monday. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, who presided over the four-month trial of Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay, will pass the sentence, which experts expect to range between 20 and 30 years.

Daniel Gordon, 29, who formerly headed energy trading for Merrill Lynch & Co. and then Allegheny Energy, on Friday was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for embezzling $43 million from the investment banker.

A plea bargain that would have sentenced former Enron Corp. Assistant Treasurer Lea Fastow, 42, to federal prison for five months was rejected by a federal judge in Houston Wednesday, but modifications could revive the deal, according to court sources. Meanwhile, a plea bargain agreement that would send her husband, former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, 42, to federal prison for 10 years, apparently was being negotiated late Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan yesterday sentencedNicholas Bush, former president of the Natural Gas SupplyAssociation (NGSA), to 41 months in prison for embezzling nearly $3million from the producer trade group.