A former McKinsey & Company consultant, Skilling helped transform Enron from a stodgy pipeline company into an “asset-light” energy giant, with interests ranging from natural gas trading to power generation, and even a hand in the nascent broadband industry. He joined Enron full-time in 1990 and was named CEO in February of 2001. But he abruptly resigned that August, citing personal reasons.
By the fall of that year, the company fell into a death spiral sparked by the discovery of accounting irregularities, including questionable deals by Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. The company also suffered from a plummet in the value of its international assets, and market turmoil following the September 11 attacks. Once the seventh largest U.S. corporation by revenue, Enron declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, the largest corporate collapse in U.S. history at the time.
Congressional committees and a U.S. Justice Department task force set out to pinpoint blame — including investigating whether Skilling knew about problems at the company before his abrupt departure. Skilling denied such knowledge. Nonetheless, a federal jury in 2006 convicted him on 19 out of 28 criminal counts including fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $45 million.
Skilling has steadfastly maintained his innocence — which the sources said remains the case today. Nonetheless, in 2013 he agreed to drop his remaining appeals in exchange for the government recommending his sentence be reduced to 14 years. He ultimately served 12 years before his release in February.
Since then, the sources said, Skilling has not only been reconnecting with friends and former colleagues, but also learning about technologies that did not exist before he went to prison — from smartphones to stretch denim.
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