U.S. `Enron Gate` Involves the White House

Is the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney at the core of the `Enron Gate`?

With the Congress proceeding with investigations on U.S.`s largest energy trading company, Enron, which filed bankruptcy in December 2001, the executives of the company were found to have contacted figures in the White House along with vice president Cheney. The news of cozy relations between politics and economics is creating a stir.

The Ministry of Justice is forming a national task force on the 9th, which consists of the criminal division of the State Department and prosecutors in Houston, San Francisco, New York, to examine the causes of the bankruptcy. This is the first time that the U.S. government formed a federal task force to probe into the accounts of a single enterprise.

The Congressional investigations committee, led by the Democratic Party, and the Senate administration committee received reports that Vice President Cheney had met with executives of Enron, including the chairman, 6 times at the White House on the 8th. Vice President Cheney was found to have contact with Enron and consulted with Enron about the energy policy until December 10th last year just before Enron announced its serious financial condition.

Therefore the Congress is likely to issue a subpoena to 49 Enron employees concerned, and complete the hearings on them first, then summon the energy task force team under Vice President Cheney, and lastly summon the people connected with Enron in the White House and the government.

Congress is looking to sue because the White House has declined to hand in the list of leaders in the energy business with whom Cheney met last year.

Bush`s economic adviser Larry Lindsey and the chief political strategist Karl Rove are said to be leading Enron supporters in the White House.

Lindsey, the prodigy of election campaigning who made George W. Bush president, once worked for Enron and received 50,000 dollars from the company. Rove sold his Enron shares for 68,000 dollars after the energy policy affinitive to the enterprises had been drafted. The stock price of Enron was 85 dollars per share one year ago, but now it is no more than 1 dollar. The chairperson of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick has also worked for Enron once in the past.

Of course, the last target is Bush and Cheney. President Bush received more than 500,000 dollars from Enron for political activities.

Ki-Heung Han eligius@donga.com