WASHINGTON, June 27 (UPI) -- The Justice Department has charged three former British bankers with wire fraud in an alleged $7.3 million scheme involving Enron Corp., prosecutors announced Thursday.
The three former employees of National Westminster City Bank, Gary Mulgrew, 40, Giles Darby, 40, and David John Bermingham, 39, were charged in a criminal complaint filed in Houston.
"As these charges demonstrate, our investigation into the collapse of Enron is active and ongoing," said Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
The complaint, filed by the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, alleges that the three former bank officers secretly invested in an Enron entity, Southampton L.P., through a series of financial transactions.
With the secret investments they were able to siphon off $7.3 million in income that belonged to their employer, the Justice Department said.
All three men were employed by the finance group Greenwich NatWest, a division of NatWest with offices in Greenwich, Conn. and London. At the time, NatWest was considered a "Tier 1" bank by Enron, which meant that it was among a small group of banks that did the most business with Enron and was given preferential treatment by Enron when transactions were contemplated.
According to the complaint, the three men also recommended that an interest in an Enron-related partnership by NatWest should be sold for $1 million even as they schemed with Enron executives to purchase the interest for $250,000.
"This complaint shows that we intend to address the conduct not only of Enron but also of those who capitalized on Enron's willingness to enter into accounting-driven transactions that lacked business purpose and served merely to enrich those involved," said Leslie R. Caldwell, director of the Enron Task Force.
The charges against the three former bankers are the first involving Enron as a company, as opposed to the indictment in March of its auditor Arthur Andersen LLP. Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding Enron audit documents.
