David Wittig, the former president, CEO and chairman of Westar Energy (shares of which I once owned) and a former vice president, Douglas Lake, have been sentenced to 18 and 15 years, respectively.
...jurors in a second trial last September found the two men guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and circumventing internal controls during their tenures at Westar, the largest electric utility in Kansas.
During sentencing, [Judge Julie] Robinson drew parallels to the Enron scandal, but said she thought Wittig and Lake's behavior may have been worse.
"The defendants' greed was unbridled and seemingly limitless," she said. "The defendants weren't trying to keep an unhealthy company afloat. They were trying to destroy a healthy company and for what reason? Their own compensation."
[CBS...]
1 comment:
Weird comment but the plot of Pixar's Monsters Inc. (which was bought for my kids, dammit) is about a corrupt owner of a utility company who resorts to anything to keep the company going (only he's a talking half-crab/half-spider).
Since it was written years before the Enron scandal broke, I've wondered if energy companies are just notoriously corrupt or if the whole thing just fell in their laps.
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