An administrator in Arthur Andersen’s Houston offices described receiving a striking amount of shredded documents in October from auditors working for Enron Corporation, just as SEC investigators were closing in on the energy trader.
Sharon Thibaut said Thursday the extra paperwork being generated by the Enron ”engagement team,” between October 23 and 26 obliged her to schedule an extra office visit by Shred It, the company that routinely disposed of the accounting firm’s waste paper.
On October 23 — the day the former lead auditor for Enron instructed his team to get in compliance with the firm’s document retention policy –Thibaut got a call from a member of the team requesting four or five trunks.
”When you ask for trunks you usually send me back shredding,” Thibaut recalled querying one of the Andersen staffers in a phone call.
”That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” replied Derek Tipton.
All told, the audit team, which was based on-site at Enron headquarters in downtown Houston, sent about 20 trunks full of paperwork in a three-day period to Andersen’s offices.
On October 25 alone, couriers picked up more than 1 000 pounds of documents stuffed in containers and boxes, according to Steve Willard, owner of City Central Courier, a trucking firm.
Federal prosecutors, who called Thibaut as a witness in Andersen’s obstruction of justice trial, contend Andersen staffers conspired to destroy Enron-related documents in the autumn of last year to prevent those papers falling into the hands of securities investigators.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission had opened an informal investigation of Enron, which went bust in spectacular style in December, shortly before the alleged cover-up at Andersen got underway.
But Andersen defence counsel Rusty Hardin said the government was distorting the truth.
”The volume was misrepresented for those three days,” he said in comments to reporters outside the court room, adding that they represented an accumulation of ten months worth of extraneous paperwork.
Moreover, Hardin insisted there wasn’t ”a shred of evidence that (Andersen employees) were motivated by the SEC.” ? Sapa-AFP