Enron's ex-CFO Fastow to spend 6 days with lawyers

LONDON, ENGLAND - Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, is due to spend six full days telling lawyers how he worked with the company's banks, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, to commit fraud at the company.

His detailed deposition will start in the next few weeks. It is expected to take 80 lawyers to process what he says and he may spend seven-and-a-half hours a day going through his story.

The disgraced businessman has admitted his own part in the fraud which brought down Enron and he turned star witness for the U.S. government's criminal prosecution of the energy company's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, and chairman, Kenneth Lay.

Both were convicted of fraud. Mr Lay has since died of a heart attack.

A group of shareholders who claim they lost $40 billion from Enron's collapse are suing several banks which they allege helped the company commit fraud.

They include RBS, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse. Barclays was included in the lawsuit but the judge presiding over the case, Melinda Harmon, struck it out in July. All banks deny wrong-doing.

Barclays said: "Andrew Fastow is a convicted felon. When he made this declaration it was part of an effort to reduce his sentence. That is what convicted felons do.''

The bank added: "We see nothing in Fastow's declaration which we think affects the judge's stated reasons (for dismissing it from the case).''