Video Reminds Bush Family of Embarrassing Enron Links

The White House last night suffered an embarrassing reminder of the Bush family's close relationship with the disgraced energy firm Enron.

A video recorded for the leaving party of a former employee shows senior executives joking about how they could manipulate the accounts to make "a kazillion dollars". It also features the current and former President Bushes paying warm tributes to the departing executive.

George Bush senior tells Enron's then president Rich Kinder: "You have been fantastic to the Bush family. I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George."

The 1997 video, shown on MSNBC last night, turned out to be prescient. In one skit, Enron's then chief executive Jeffrey Skilling is shown handing a budget report to a colleague , and explaining how Enron could achieve 600% revenue growth in the coming year. "We're going to move to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting," he says. "If we do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line."

On the tape, then chief accounting officer Richard Causey jokes: "I've been on the job for a week managing earnings, and it's easier than I thought it would be."

George Bush junior, then governor of Texas, says to Mr Kinder, who has not been implicated in the financial scandal: "Don't leave Texas. You're too good a man."

The relationship between the White House and Enron came under heavy scrutiny following the Enron collapse, during which it emerged that the company had been hiding massive debts.

President Bush was close to the Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay, referring to him affectionately as "Kenny boy."

Congressional hearings into the role that the now defunct Enron auditor Arthur Andersen played were concluded yesterday with the recommendation that a criminal investigation be opened on Nancy Temple, the firm's former in-house lawyer. She sent an email which reminded staff of Andersen's document retention policy, which was alleged to have sparked the shredding of important papers.