An elaborate parody appears to be behind the effort to revive Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst of American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001.
If his return is comical, some former employees who lost everything in the Enron collapse are not laughing.
“It’s a pretty sick joke and it disparages the people who worked there. And why would you want to bring it back in the first place?” said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented workers in the company’s bankruptcy case.
Here’s what you need to know about the history of Enron and the alleged efforts to turn it around.
What happened at Enron?
Once the nation’s seventh-largest company, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on December 2, 2001, after years of accounting gimmicks no longer able to hide billions of dollars in debt or make failed ventures look profitable. The collapse of the energy company put more than 5,000 people out of work and wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions. Its aftershocks were felt throughout the energy sector.
Twenty-four Enron executivesincluding former CEO Jeffrey Skillingwere convicted for their role in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay’s convictions were overturned after he died of heart disease following his trial in 2006.
Is Enron Back?
On Monday – the 23rd anniversary of its bankruptcy filing – the company posing as Enron announced in a press release that it was relaunching as “a company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” He also posted the video on social media, advertised it on at least one Houston billboard and ran a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle
In a one-minute video full of generic corporate jargon, the company talks about “growth” and “rebirth.” He ends with the words: “We are back. can we talk?”
In an email, company spokesman Will Chabot said the new Enron is not yet giving interviews, but “will have more to share soon.”
Signs indicate that the return is a joke.
The “terms of use and conditions of sale” on the company’s website state that “information on the website about Enron is protected by the First Amendment as parodies, constitutes performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only.”
Documents filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office show that Arkansas-based College Company, LLC owns the Enron trademark. College Company is co-founded by Connor Gaydos, who helped create the humorous conspiracy theory that claims all birds are actually government drones.
What do former Enron employees think about the company’s comeback?
Peters said she and some other former employees are upset and think the reboot was “tasteless.”
“If it’s a joke, it’s rude, extremely rude. And I hope they realize that and apologize to all the Enron employees,” Peters said.
Peters, 74, said she still works in information technology because “I lost everything at Enron, so my Social Security doesn’t always take care of the things I need to do.”
“The fall of Enron taught us critical lessons about corporate ethics, responsibility, and the consequences of unbridled ambition. Enron’s legacy was employees in the trenches. Leave Enron buried,” she said.
But Sherron Watkins, Enron’s former vice president of corporate development and the lead whistleblower who helped uncover the scandal, said she had no problem with the joke because comedy “usually helps us focus on an unpleasant historical event that we’d rather ignore.”
“I think we use past scandals to teach new generations what can go wrong with big companies,” said Watkins, who still speaks at colleges and conferences about the Enron scandal.
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This story has been corrected to correct the spelling of Ken Lay’s name, which was misspelled as “Key.”
