Small Reduction
Prosecutor Patrick Stokes said that both of Skillings’ parents and his oldest son died while he was incarcerated, calling that “a tremendous tragedy.” Stokes said the deal made only a small reduction in the sentence Skilling would have received after an appellate ruling knocked at least nine years from his term.
“We considered first and foremost the need to pay restitution,” Stokes told Lake. “This agreement completes the process of stripping Mr. Skilling of his ill-gotten gains” and returns roughly $41 million to victims.
Skilling’s assets were originally valued at $45 million but have liquidated at a slightly lesser value, Petrocelli said. The amount is “virtually all the property and assets he has,” Petrocelli said.
At today’s hearing, Skilling listened to the lone Enron employee who spoke against him and smiled occasionally at family members in court, including his wife, brother and sister.
Betrayed Trust
Diana Peters, the former Enron employee, told Lake that Enron’s employees gave “110 percent of their lives to Enron,” as well as their trust and loyalty to Skilling. “Jeff Skilling betrayed that trust,” she said.
Skilling told the court he had submitted a written statement to the judge supporting the deal and that he had nothing more to add.
A Houston jury convicted him and Enron’s former Chairman Kenneth Lay of manipulating the company’s financial statements and misleading investors. Lay died before he had the chance to appeal, and the verdicts against him were erased.
Skilling fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed in 2010 that his convictions were based in part on an invalid legal theory known as the “theft of honest services.” The high court ordered an appeals court to review Skilling’s case to see whether the tainted theory required his convictions to be thrown out.