Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron Corporation chief executive, turned himself in on Thursday to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was taken in handcuffs to a federal courthouse where he pleaded innocent to three dozen criminal charges related to the company's collapse.
The indictment accused Skilling and Richard Causey, Enron's former chief accounting officer, for fraud and conspiracy to mislead government regulators and investors about the company's earnings.
Causey, 44, was indicted a month ago and is free on $500,000 bond.
Skilling, 50, is the highest-ranking former Enron executive to date to face criminal charges so far. He was the company's CEO for only six months.
He quit in August 2001, less than four months before the company imploded in scandal. The charges come two years after Skilling told Congress that he knew nothing about serious problems at Enron.
In an arraignment hearing at a Houston courthouse, Skilling pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
"I plead not guilty to all counts," Skilling told US magistrate Judge Frances Stacy, who set bond for him at $5 million.
One of three attorneys accompanying him before the judge told her he was prepared to post the bond in cash.
If convicted of all counts, prosecutors said Skilling faced a maximum of 325 years in prison and more than $80 million in fines.
Another court appearance for Skilling was set for March 11.
Skilling was named in 36 of the counts, 10 of them specifically accusing him of insider trading that generated $62.6 million from stock sold from April 2000 through September 2001, which was about a month after he quit Houston-based Enron.
During that time, according to the indictment, he sold shares in blocks ranging from 10,000 to 500,000. In that time, Enron stock sold as high as $87 in September 2000 to $31 in September 2001.
The indictment also mentions former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, who pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal prosecutors, and former treasurer Ben Glisan, who leaded guilty to conspiracy and became the first former Enron executive put behind bars.
The indictment makes no mention of Skilling's former boss, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, either by name or by title. Lay, who served as CEO before Skilling, has maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing related to Enron's failure.
From 1999 through late 2001, Skilling, Causey and their co-conspirators 'engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to deceive the investing public, the (Securities and Exchange Commission), credit rating agencies and others about the true performance of Enron's businesses' by manipulating the company's finances and making false and misleading public statements about Enron's financial performance, the indictment said.
The government was seeking to seize from Skilling accounts worth more than $50 million, plus an 8,000-square-foot Houston mansion with a market value of $4.7 million.
Causey, who was fired in February 2002 after an internal probe concluded he failed in his duty to adequately look out for Enron's interests when the energy giant did deals with Fastow's partnerships, initially had been charged with six counts. He had pleaded innocent.
Additional counts unsealed today accuse him specifically of insider trading and allege he sold shares of stock generating $10.3 million from January 2000 to September 2000. The government is seeking forfeiture of Causey's suburban Houston home plus three accounts worth more than $3 million.
In the latest indictment, both men are accused of wire fraud, securities fraud, securities fraud regarding presentations to securities analysts and of making false statements to auditors in annual representation letters and false statement to auditors.