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That flair led Watkins last summer to conclude there was something rotten at Enron. The numbers didn't add up. A pair of letters that she wrote to Chairman Kenneth Lay exposed top officials--perhaps including Lay himself--who for months had been trying to hide a mountain of debt, and started a chain reaction of events that brought down the company. Watkins' letters, along with thousands of other documents, are now in the hands of congressional and criminal investigators who are probing how Enron, its pet-rock auditors at Andersen and a host of other supporting actors allowed...
...took Watkins weeks to work up the nerve to write her first letter to Lay. She had been working for chief financial officer Andrew Fastow last summer, looking for assets to sell as Enron ran into financial trouble while transforming itself into a company that traded energy, water, weather derivatives and anything else it could turn into a commodity. Watkins wanted to help, but everywhere she looked she ran into off-the-books arrangements that no one could explain or seemed to want to investigate. She knew that others who had pressed then CEO Jeffrey Skilling about the investments...
Watkins learned Enron was losing money on two equity investments: network-equipment supplier Avici lost 98% of its value, and another, New Power, an energy retailer that had Ken Lay on the board, dropped more than 80%. Because both firms were backed by Enron stock, Watkins knew their downfall was dragging down Enron too. None of that was being reflected in the company's public filings, as far as she could tell. As her lawyer Philip Hilder explains, "The numbers just didn...
Already known as outspoken, Watkins didn't want to approach Skilling directly for fear of losing her job, Hilder says. "She thought it would be fruitless while he was there." When Skilling suddenly quit on Aug. 14, Lay called an all-employees meeting two days later and asked for comments from workers beforehand. That's when Watkins finally sat down to write a one-page anonymous letter on her computer at work. She dropped it in the box at headquarters the next...
...companywide meeting, Lay invited anyone troubled by Skilling's departure to meet with him. Four days later Watkins called a friend at Andersen and asked for advice. On Aug. 21 the friend drafted a memo detailing Watkins' concerns for Andersen auditors on the Enron account. Meanwhile, Watkins went to Lay seeking a meeting. The next day she met with the chairman...