>> On The 23rd Of October, 2006, The Former Chief

>> On the 23rd of October, 2006, the former chief executive of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, was given a 24 year jail sentence for fraud, conspiracy, and insider dealing.>> Why not?>> [Music] The story began on the 16th of October, 2001, when the energy giant, Enron disclosed that it had made a massive loss of 638 million dollars in just one quarter. By December that year, the company had filed for bankruptcy. Enron started in Houston, Texas, in 1985 buying gas and electricity and selling it on to consumers. A series of acquisitions and diversifications saw it grow into the 7th biggest company in the United States. Company Chairman Kenneth Lay was a friend and financial supporter of President George Bush. Enron was a model for corporate success but when the company collapsed, investigators found it had used complex partnerships to hide some 500 million dollars of debt while continuing to borrow to run its trading business. For a year before bankruptcy, senior Enron executives had been secretly selling off their stock before the losses were made public yet when share prices went into free fall, the 20,000 ordinary employees who had been encouraged to buy stock with their pensions were