The U.S. Department of Labor Thursday announced a settlement agreement with former Enron executive Jeffrey K. Skilling resolving the department's action against him.
Under the agreement, Skilling will drop his opposition to a previous 85 million dollars settlement, waive his right to benefits from Enron's pension plans and be permanently barred from serving in a fiduciary capacity to any employee benefit plan governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) inthe future.
This proposed settlement must be formally documented and submitted for approval to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Skilling was convicted in May of conspiracy and fraud and was sentenced last month to 24 years and 4 months in prison for crimes related to the financial scandal that brought down Enron in 2001.
The company's collapse wiped out thousands of jobs and more than 2 billion dollars in employee pension plans.
The settlement acknowledges that Skilling is already subject to an order of forfeiture obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice's Enron Task Force.
That order, entered Oct. 23, 2006 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, requires the establishment of a 45million dollars restitution fund for victims of Enron-related fraud, including plan participants and securities investors.
The Labor Department's settlement provides that, if Skilling's convictions are overturned or vacated and the restitution fund is dissolved, Skilling will still pay 2.5 million dollars to the participants and beneficiaries in the company's savings and employee stock ownership plans plus 500,000 dollars in penalties to the department.
On June 26, 2003, the Labor Department sued Skilling and others for mismanagement of the plans in violation of ERISA.
In previous settlements obtained by the Labor Department and private plaintiffs, more than 220.8 million dollars has been recovered for the pension plans from Enron, its directors, officers and fiduciaries who served on the plans' administrative committee.
