Enron's Jeff Skilling has a good chance on appeal?

Yesterday I wrote that former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling is appealing his various convictions related to conspiracy, securities fraud and insider trading.

Now the Houston Chronicle is dropping a bombshell: "Thanks to an appeals ruling in a separate Enron case, issued less than two months after Skilling was convicted in 2006, legal experts say Skilling has a strong chance to get most - and perhaps all - of his 19 convictions overturned."

The appeals ruling centered around the "honest services" law that the Enron Task Force used to pursue convictions involving various former employees. Essentially, they argued that engaging in fraud deprived their employer, Enron, of honset services. But that argument has been tossed out on the grounds that their behavior was consistent with Enron's goals of increasing reported profits and the share price -- the employees didn't steal, embezzle etc.

Logically, that might make sense for lower-level employees. But as the man at the top of the company, Jeff Skilling was responsible for the company's dishonest services. Mr. Skilling decided what the corporate goals were and, from the very beginning he sought to inflate the company's earnings: he joined Enron on the contingency that the firm would employ a perversion of mark to market accounting for booking profits from deals it entered into -- an accounting gimmick that was a major part of what allowed Enron to inflate its income statements. Testifying before Congress, he later claimed that he "wasn't an accountant" and couldn't be held responsible for the accounting treatment that he demanded!

If Skilling's convictions are overturned, the Enron Task Force will have to be declared a miserable failure: six years for financial mastermind Andy Fastow as part of a plea bargain to provide testimony against the top two men, neither of whom ended up serving significant time in prison, will be seen as a poor crowning achievement.