Enron's public story is a completed accounting-fraud case: a celebrated trader, a set of related-party structures, a restatement, and a bankruptcy that Congress answered with a statute.
The beats below follow the sequence in the Powers Report and the Houston dockets rather than the film shorthand.
Beats
- Pipeline company to trading floor
After the 1985 Houston Natural Gas-InterNorth merger, Enron became a large trader of energy contracts and a symbol of U.S. market deregulation.
- Earnings that needed vehicles
Mark-to-market gains and special-purpose entities, including Fastow-related LJM partnerships and the Raptors, kept reported numbers ahead of cash and of some debts.
- Watkins, restatement, Dynegy
Skilling's August 2001 resignation, Watkins's letter to Lay, the October charge, and the failed Dynegy deal turned a valuation debate into a run on confidence.
- Bankruptcy and Andersen
The 2 December 2001 filing and the Andersen obstruction case made Enron a national political event, not only a Houston bankruptcy.
- Pleas, trial, statute
Fastow's 2004 plea, the 2006 Lay-Skilling verdicts, and Sarbanes-Oxley (2002) are the legal ending most encyclopedias record.
The story on the public record is not whether Enron failed. It is how the earnings story was built and how Congress and the Houston jury answered.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.