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Enron Mail |
January 23, 2002 Dow Jones Newswires Calif Attorney Genl Says Likely To File More Energy Suits Dow Jones Newswires SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday he is likely to file more unfair business practice lawsuits against energy suppliers he thinks overcharged for electricity. But Lockyer, in a telephone interview, said after a yearlong investigation he has found no criminal wrongdoing by any energy suppliers. He said he has discovered possible civil violations of California consumer laws prohibiting overcharging - violations that carry no jail or prison time. Lockyer's disclosure came a week after the state's top law enforcement official sued Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., the parent to Pacific Gas and Electric Co., for allegedly siphoning billions from its underling and forcing it to seek federal bankruptcy protection. The PG&E suit is "the first of many I would expect in the energy area to overcome overcharges," Lockyer told The Associated Press. "We've devoted a huge amount of investigative and lawyering time to get back the money...generators extracted from Californians," he added. Lockyer declined to name other companies that he would sue, but his office has subpoenaed records from Dynegy, Enron Corp., Mirant Corp. and Reliant Energy - all of which have denied wrongdoing. In the interview, the attorney general did mention Enron by name, saying "we're still looking at the energy overcharges," and he accused Enron of withholding documents. Enron, a major energy trading concern, has filed for bankruptcy protection following the disclosure that it misstated its earnings by hundreds of millions of dollars. PG&E, the only supplier Lockyer has sued, blamed its woes on a 1996 California law that left it unable to collect the full price of electricity from its customers. Lockyer's disclosure that he hasn't discovered criminal conduct, including no evidence of a conspiracy to fix prices, comes nearly a year after he said he wanted to jail Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman. Lockyer told the Wall Street Journal in May that, "I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8 by 10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi my name is Spike, honey."' On Wednesday, Lockyer declared the statement "rhetorical excess," adding, "So far...we haven't found criminal behavior associated with pricing policies." Still, the city of San Francisco has accused 13 energy suppliers of manipulating prices in a suit that is pending in San Diego County Superior Court. That suit alleges the suppliers manipulated supplies to keep prices high. San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Mark Slavin said the city doesn't have proof of those allegations, but would uncover them as the lawsuit proceeds in a process known as discovery. "We think that the discovery process will uncover anticompetitive behavior," Slavin said. The energy suppliers have denied the allegations. A California legislative committee also investigating a spike in wholesale energy costs has served additional subpoenas on Enron officials. The Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation in the Wholesale Energy Market summoned Enron officials to appear for depositions regarding destruction of documents. Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, and the committee's chairman, said he's concerned that documents destroyed by Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, were covered by a legislative subpoena issued in June. Dunn's committee on Wednesday also agreed to subpoena Andersen regarding the Enron records. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=DI-CO-20020123-011366.djm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Copyright ? 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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