Word: jedi
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Long before the power crisis, California and Enron got along just fine. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation's largest pension fund investor, had invested $250 million in one of the first of Enron's now-infamous off-balance-sheet partnerships - called JEDI - and got a 73 percent return over just three years. Small wonder then that when Enron execs came back in 1997 with JEDI II, a similar vehicle to invest in energy projects, including Enron's own Energy Services, CalPERS listened...
...according to minutes of a closed-door 1997 CalPERS Investment Committee meeting obtained by TIME, members saw in JEDI II the same red flags flying at the Enron crime scene now. The committee was clearly mystified by Enron's murky corporate structure and by the company's proposal to put up stock, not cash, for part of their investment in JEDI II. The potential for conflicts of interest between Enron and JEDI - already flagged by CalPERS' investment advisers - was also raised...
...There is nothing inherently sinister about special-purpose entities, and Enron's initial investors did well because the deals were straightforward. CalPERS, the California state pension system and one of the nation's largest institutional investors, put $250 million into an spe called jedi i, which invested in natural gas projects. CalPERS got back $433 million, a spiffy 73% return over four years...
...When Fastow and Skilling went back to CalPERS in 1997 with jedi ii, the natural gas projects had been replaced by unspecified energy projects. CalPERS pulled out of jedi ii in October 2000 to invest in something simpler and more transparent, and Fastow scrambled to set up an entity to take its place. Known as Chewco, it was a partnership controlled by Enron employees, including Kopper. According to the Powers report, Chewco and similar partnerships were engaged in shuffling assets to cover losses and create illusory profits. As a result, Enron overstated earnings by $1 billion from the third quarter...
...company fell so far so fast, taking with it the jobs and pension savings of thousands of workers and inflicting losses on millions of individual investors. At the heart of Enron's demise was the creation of partnerships with shell companies, many with names like Chewco and JEDI, inspired by Star Wars characters. These shell companies, run by Enron executives who profited richly from them, allowed Enron to keep hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off its books. But once stock analysts and financial journalists heard about these arrangements, investors began to lose confidence in the company's finances...