Kenneth L. Lay
Chairman and CEO
Longtime leader of Enron. Convicted in 2006; died on 5 July 2006 before sentencing. The district court vacated the conviction by abatement.
Hundreds of employees and counterparties appear in the bankruptcy. The six names below are the ones the criminal and board records keep returning to.
Roles are taken from indictments, pleas, the Powers Report, and appellate opinions.
People
Jeffrey K. Skilling
CEO (2001); defendant
Architect of the trading strategy. Convicted in 2006 on conspiracy, fraud, and insider-trading counts; sentence later reduced after appeals.
Andrew S. Fastow
Chief financial officer
Organizer of LJM and related vehicles. Pleaded guilty in 2004 to conspiracy; served a six-year sentence and testified in Houston.
Sherron Watkins
Vice president; internal warning
Wrote the August 2001 letter to Lay about accounting risk. Later testified to Congress. Time named her a Person of the Year in 2002 with two other whistleblowers.
David B. Duncan
Andersen engagement partner
Lead partner on the Enron audit. Pleaded guilty to obstruction in 2002, later allowed to withdraw the plea after the Supreme Court reversed Andersen's conviction.
William C. Powers Jr.
Board special-committee chair
Then dean of the University of Texas School of Law. His committee's February 2002 report is the standard board-level narrative of the structures.
Rebecca Mark-Jusbasche, Lou Pai, and various bankers appear in civil files; they are secondary to the criminal core of Lay, Skilling, and Fastow.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.