Is Enron back? If it’s a joke, some former employees aren’t laughing

HOUSTON — An elaborate parody appears to be behind an attempt to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based vigor business that exemplified the worst in American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001.

If its profit is comedic, some former employees who lost everything in Enron’s collapse aren’t laughing.

“It’s a pretty ill joke and it disparages the people that did work there. And why would you desire to even bring it back up again?” said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented workers in the business’s financial setback proceedings.

Here’s what to recognize about the history of Enron and the purported attempt to bring it back.

Once the country’s seventh-largest business, Enron filed for financial setback protection on Dec. 2, 2001, after years of bookkeeping tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in obligation or make failing ventures appear profitable. The vigor business’s collapse 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 vigor sector.

Twenty-four Enron executives, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted for their roles in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay’s convictions were vacated after he died of heart disease following his 2006 trial.

On Monday — the 23rd anniversary of the financial setback filing — a business representing itself as Enron announced in a information release it was relaunching as a “business dedicated to solving the global vigor crisis.” It also posted a video on social media, advertised on at least one Houston billboard and a took out a packed-page ad in the Houston Chronicle

In the minute-long video packed of generic corporate jargon, the business talks about “growth” and “rebirth.” It ends with the words, “We’re back. Can we talk?”

In an email, business spokesperson Will Chabot said the recent Enron was not doing any interviews yet, but “We’ll have more to distribute soon.”

Signs point to the comeback being a joke.

In the “terms of use and conditions of sale” on the business’s website, it says “the information on the website about Enron is First Amendment protected parody, represents act art, and is for entertainment purposes only.”

Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office display College business, an Arkansas-based LLC, owns the Enron trademark. The co-founder of College business is Connor Gaydos, who helped make a joke conspiracy hypothesis claiming all birds are actually government surveillance drones.

Peters said she and some other former employees are upset and ponder the relaunch was “in impoverished taste.”

“If it’s a joke, it’s impolite, extremely impolite. And I aspiration that they realize it and apologize to all of the Enron employees,” Peters said.

Peters, 74, said she is still working in information technology because “I lost everything in Enron, and so my Social safety doesn’t always receive worry of things I require done.”

“Enron’s downfall taught us critical lessons about corporate ethics, accountability, and the consequences of unchecked aspiration. Enron’s legacy was the employees in the trenches. Leave Enron buried,” she said.

But Sherron Watkins, Enron’s former vice president of corporate advancement and the main whistleblower who helped uncover the scandal, said she didn’t have a issue with the joke because comedy “usually helps us focus on an uncomfortable historical occurrence that we’d rather ignore.”

“I ponder we use prior scandals to try to instruct recent generations what can leave incorrect with large companies,” said Watkins, who still speaks at colleges and conferences about the Enron scandal.

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This narrative was corrected to fix the spelling of Ken Lay’s first name, which had been misspelled “Key.”

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pursue Juan A. Lozano on X at https://x.com/juanlozano70