Two-year-old Enron grand jury still on the job

HOUSTON -- - The special grand jury appointed two years ago to probe the Enron Corp. collapse has issued more than two dozen indictments but will not be disbanded until prosecutors finish investigating the remaining suspects, lawyers said recently.

The Enron grand jury was impaneled in Houston on March 27, 2002, a little more than three months after Enron's nosedive into a record-breaking bankruptcy after amassive accounting fraud and billions in hidden debt were revealed. Since then, the grand jury has issued the bulk of the indictments from the U.S. Justice Department's Enron Task Force investigation.

Prosecutors said they are still searching for guilty parties meaning their main weapon, the grand jury, is not done either. The probe to date has led to charges against 29 defendants, as high up the corporate ladder as former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling.

Twenty of those defendants are former Enron executives, and nine have been convicted. Former Chairman Kenneth Lay, who is absent from that list and has denied all wrongdoing, remains a focus of the investigation.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the status of its investigation since the grand jury and its proceedings are secret under federal law.

"I would anticipate if the grand jury is not done with their investigations, that they would be extended for some period of time," said Philip Hilder, a criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. "It is likely the grand jury's focus has turned to Lay, who is the most senior former executive not charged with a crime." Lay's lawyer did not return a call seeking comment. The panel now may also be focused on obtaining new evidence from witnesses who have pleaded guilty, like former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, said Bryan Blaney, a white collar criminal defense lawyer with Lowenstein Sandler.

"You can anticipate that if they have some cooperators, the prosecutors will be bringing them in and locking down their stories," he said.

Blaney, a former federal prosecutor who handled numerous grand jury investigations and worked on the Iran-Contra probe, said prosecutors often bond with grand jurors over time.

"If what you're giving them is interesting and sexy, you can keep their interest. They begin to trust you," he said.

The 26 anonymous grand jurors digging into the Enron scandal could be required to serve up to another year, Hilder said. A special grand jury in the federal system is initially called to serve for 18 months, but the term can be as long as 36 months if a judge extends it. A special grand jury differs from an ordinary grand jury in its narrow focus on related criminal activities.