New evidence appears to show that Enron advised its employees to invest their pension funds, known as "401(k) funds", exclusively in the company's own stock, contrary to executives' claims before Congress that they would have been keen to urge diversification.
A newly discovered 1999 videotape of an employee meeting appears to contradict testimony of the company's personnel director, Ms Cindy Olson, according to one Congressman, Mr Henry Waxman.
Details of the videotape emerged as the Washington Post reported yesterday that the company, currently undergoing restructuring, is contemplating a name change to give it a "fresh start". The paper also reveals that Enron executives may receive further "retention" bonuses to persuade them to stay on. A spokesman for Enron, Mr Mark Palmer, said "unfortunately the name has been tainted by the actions of a handful, so it's unfortunately come to mean a lot of things. None of them good."
In a letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, Mr Waxman said a woman identified only as "Cindy" on the video responds "absolutely" when asked by an employee, "Should we invest all of our 401(k) in Enron stock?"
The Enron executive, Mr Jeffrey Skilling, later the CEO, nodded in agreement to the word "absolutely", according to Mr Waxman.
The California Democrat said the Enron chairman, Mr Kenneth Lay, the chief operating officer, Mr Skilling, and the vice-chairman, Mr Joseph Sutton, were all at the podium when the question was asked and answered.
When Ms Olson testified before Mr Lieberman's panel, she claimed that Enron would have encouraged employees to diversify their holdings. "We tried to talk about diversification with respect to choice in the 401(k)," Ms Olson said. But "there's a fine line that employers have with respect to giving investment advice. And so we were concerned about stepping over that line."
The Post reported on Thursday that Mr Lay offered then-Treasury Secretary, Mr Robert Rubin, a seat on the Enron board of directors in 1999, at a time when Enron was lobbying hard against efforts to regulate its derivatives-trading business.
