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American Morning

Kopper in Court to Plead Guilty

Aired August 21, 2002 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And now to that news that this former Enron executive is expected to plead guilty today in the first criminal case brought against a company official. Michael Kopper, a top lieutenant of former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, will appear today in federal court in Houston. Prosecutors are hoping that with Kopper's cooperation, other former Enron execs will soon follow.
CNN's Ed Lavandera is on the case from Houston -- good morning, Ed. What is expected there today?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what is expected here is probably to be a rather quick and brief court appearance for Michael Kopper to enter his guilty plea, and of course, there is a lot of paperwork that that entails, but from what we understand, if it goes similar to the experience that David Duncan with Andersen Consulting had, that turned out to be a rather quick court process as well. Just a short time ago, Michael Kopper arriving here at the federal courthouse in downtown Houston flanked by his attorneys and one person that we believe to be a FBI agent as well. So making a quick entrance into the back door of the federal courthouse here in downtown Houston.

Of course, Kopper will plead guilty, we understand, to one charge of wire fraud and one charge of money laundering. Of course, he was the former managing director of the Enron Global Finance division, and worked very closely, as you mentioned, Paula, with Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer of the Enron corporation. Investigators believe that although Michael Kopper is not one of the high profile names you have heard in this story, as the Enron case has unfolded over the course of the last ten months, but that he knows the right people, and more specifically and more importantly, perhaps, investigators believe he knew what those people might have been doing.

Kopper was involved in directing one of those partnerships called Chewco, which, if you have been following this story, it was responsible for creating part of the financial troubles for Enron, basically hiding losses and turning them into profits on the balance sheets, and a lot of people have credited that kind of process and that kind of bookkeeping as part of the reason that the Enron corporation has fallen so quickly and fell so dramatically last December.

So, Kopper in court today, is already inside, beginning the process of pleading guilty to this, and of course, what he will be able to help investigators with as these investigators and federal investigators continue to go after the bigger fish, if you will, inside the Enron corporation, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and of course, Ken Lay, the chairman of Enron. A lot of these details and the more specific details of his plea agreement will be made public here shortly -- Paula.

ZAHN: So Ed, let's talk about the challenge of going after the bigger fish here, in this investigation. Have investigators told you that they believe the information Mr. Kopper will either share with investigators today or somewhere down the road, that it might lead to some more high ranking officials copping a plea?

LAVANDERA: They haven't said specifically exactly perhaps what they expect to get from Kopper, and you know, I think they are keeping that rather close to the vest. But if you remember the "Powers Report" that came out several months ago which was that report basically documenting all of the troubles that Enron went through and what exactly led to that report. Skilling's name, Fastow's name, and Lay's name were mentioned several times, of course, but Kopper's name popped up 108 times in that report.

So, clearly, investigators think that he has a lot of knowledge about what exactly was done and as a top deputy to Andrew Fastow, perhaps these are people that investigators will have to lean on to get some of the bigger names in this corporation. So you might imagine that he has been under an extreme amount of pressure over the last couple of months.

ZAHN: All right, Ed. We have got to stop there.

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