While Enron officials are pleased with the centralising of the department's several inquiries, the company still has to deal with a horde of other legal challenges, including the bankruptcy case, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and congressional hearings.
Many commentators believe the heart of Enron's problems were complex financial partnerships which were set up to keep debt off the company's highly leveraged books.
Last week, Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen, notified authorities involved in investigations that in recent months, some employees had disposed of a "significant" but yet "undetermined" number of electronic and paper documents. Andersen has assured the SEC, the Justice Department and other agencies its full cooperation in the investigations and has even begun to retrieve some of the deleted electronic files.
Given the close relationship between President Bush and former Enron boss, Mr Kenneth Lay, it was only a matter of time before the biggest bankruptcy in US history would reach the White House. The American media has reported Enron executives met Bush Administration officials six times last year, including one meeting on October 10, which was only days before the company declared bankruptcy.
The Bush Administration is working frantically to distance themselves from the firm even though Enron was a major contributor to the President's winning election campaign. No doubt, the Administration would want to avoid the scandals that plagued Bill Clinton during his presidency.
In an effort to reorganise itself under bankruptcy protection, Enron has sold its wholesale energy trading unit, described by some as its most important business unit, to UBS Warburg, a subsidiary of Switzerland's UBS AG.
As for Australia, administrators for Enron's Australian subsidiary said the winding-up of the group's electricity and weather derivative book would be a slow process after the rejection of bids for its sale. The administrator, Sims Lockwood, provided data room access for nine potential bidders but no sale was made. The electronic book at the start of the sales process was estimated to be worth about $5 million although valuations on outstanding contracts are still to be agreed.
In the most recent development, it has emerged that a former employee warned Mr Kenneth Lay in a letter last August that the company's accounting concealed losses in partnerships, which led Enron to bankruptcy. "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals," the employee had written, according to the commission investigating the collapse. Very prophetic words indeed.
