Enron's Skilling Completes Six Months Behind Bars

For the fraudulent mastermind behind the collapse of Enron, this week marked a minor milestone.

Jeffrey Skilling has completed his first six months at a low-security prison in Minnesota. He only has 23 years and 10 months to go.

Skilling's jail, which is just outside the 9,600-strong town of Waseca (slogan: "for an hour...for a lifetime"), houses inmates in four-bunk, dormitory-style cells.

A former inmate told the Dallas Morning News that the former millionaire is probably, as a new inmate, in an upper bunk with a steam pipe six inches away from his face.

"I'm sure he thinks it's hell," said the one-time prisoner succinctly.

Does a similar fate await Conrad Black, the fallen press baron whose trial is entering its final stages? With the jury due to go out early next week, the former Telegraph owner's future is truly on a knife edge.

Black is accused of fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. The US government alleges that he plundered $60m (£30m) from his Hollinger media empire.

Legal analysts, journalists and expert commentators are split on the likely outcome of the thee-month trial. Stephen Skurka, a Canadian lawyer who has been in court throughout, reckons Black will be cleared on all counts.

Others, including Chicago attorney Hugh Totten, believe the US government has done enough to prove its charges. Totten told Canada's CTV this week that prosecutor Julie Ruder's closing statement was a "home run" showing a "very broad and very deep evidentiary foundation" for the case.

If the jury decides that Black's guilt is beyond reasonable doubt, the erudite, ermine-clad former inksmith faces many years in the clanger.

'Where are those victims?'

But just how high should his alleged crimes rank in America's hit parade of crooked corporate chiefs?

A comparison with Skilling is an interesting one. Many people instinctively feel that the crimes of Skilling and his late conspirator, Ken Lay, were much worse than Black's alleged transgressions because Enron went bust - leaving 21,000 victims without jobs, healthcare or pensions.

Hollinger, on the other hand, is still soldiering on under a new name - Sun-Times Media Group.

Black and his co-defendants are accused of skimming a cut of the proceeds from a series of sales of newspaper titles which were actually, as a whole, lucrative and cash-generative for investors.

In his closing statement, Black's lawyer, Edward Greenspan, pointed out that the US government had failed to produce a single "victim" of the peer's alleged crimes: "We've been sitting here for 14 weeks. Where are those shareholders? Where are those victims?"

But that isn't really a satisfactory defence.

If Black is guilty, he hurt thousands of shareholders by a tiny measure apiece. As individuals, they wouldn't have noticed their loss.

Is the pain suffered by victims a proper measure of the severity of a crime? Or, to be philosophical for a moment, should we also measure it according to intent?

In the Enron scandal, Skilling and Lay went through extraordinary accounting contortions to hide the extent of mounting problems at the energy trading behemoth. They shovelled losses into off-balance sheet vehicles in the belief that they could turn things round.

Their crimes were motivated by pride and by arrogance. They were propping up their own lifestyles and there was some evidence of insider dealing. But in their own twisted way, they were also trying to save their company - and, presumably, to avoid the catastrophic pain that its failure would entail.

If Black is convicted, he cannot possibly argue that any of his alleged crimes were misguided attempts on any level to support Hollinger. Or that he was swept along by events with a momentum of their own.

The charges against him amount to straightforward theft, motivated - the US government claims - by personal greed and a desire to maintain a luxurious transatlantic lifestyle of antique-stuffed apartments, champagne and caviar, diamond rings and exotic holidays.

If Black is guilty, he is a thief - pure and simple – even though the amount involved is far smaller than the sums tied up in Enron's web of corruption.

America's treatment of white-collar criminals is severe. Sam Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Washington University in St Louis, told me during the Enron fiasco that the difference is partly down to broad public involvement in the stockmarket. About half of the US public owns stocks or shares, compared to about a third of Brits.

"The average American is invested in the stockmarket to a degree not seen 10 to 15 years ago. To have an adequate pension, you need to invest personally - it's not enough to rely on your employer," said Buell. "All of that means candour and truth on the financial markets are much more at the forefront of American minds than they are in the UK."

Black's fate will be determined within the next few weeks.

In the same courthouse, just upstairs, Chicago's biggest mob trial for many years is just beginning.

Joey "the clown" Lombardo, in a wheelchair aged 78, is accused of being the godfather of the "Chicago Outfit" in the 1970s and 1980s. Just like Conrad, he's charged with racketeering. But he's alleged to have been involved in murders. That's worse – no argument there.