Enron director to admit fraud

The first major executive in the Enron scandal to face justice was due to plead guilty today in a federal court in Houston.

The former director of Enron Global Finance, Michael Kopper, was expected to admit several charges related to wire fraud and money-laundering associated with the debt-hiding scheme that sunk the energy giant and touched off a wave of accounting scandals in corporate America.

Kopper is the first high-level Enron executive to be charged with criminal conduct. His decision to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors was hailed as a major breakthrough in a longrunninginvestigation into the moribund company's affairs.

As a top lieutenant to ex-chief financial officer Andrew Fastow and member of former chief executive Kenneth Lay's inner circle, Koppper is likely to have intimate knowledge of Enron's most senior management's role in any financial wrongdoing.

Enron has been under the US government microscope since it filed for bankruptcy last year after disclosing it had hidden massive amounts of debt and inflated profits by more than $1billion through an elaborate web of limited partnerships.

Kopper, a New Yorker who attended the London School of Economics, joined Enron in 1994.

He ran an Enron partnership called Chewco until leaving the company to head another entity with Enron ties, LJM2, one of the limited partnerships at the centre of the criminal and civil investigation.

An earlier inquiry by Enron's board of directors found Kopper's ties to Enron were extremely lucrative. He reportedly turned a hundred thousand dollar investment in Enron partnerships into $10 million in only three years.