Report clears ex-secretary of Treasury in Enron case

? Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin did not violate the law by seeking government intervention on Enron’s behalf as the company tumbled toward bankruptcy, a staff report by a Senate committee says.

A phone call to a President Bush treasury official by Rubin, the former President Clinton treasury chief who is an executive of financial giant Citigroup, became a political issue a year ago as the White House worked to control fallout from an inquiry into Enron’s collapse.

Based on a staff investigation, “it does not appear that Rubin violated any laws or regulations in … proposing that the Treasury Department contact a credit-rating agency in connection with Enron’s rating,” said the bipartisan report released Friday by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Houston-based Enron had ties to many top Bush administration officials, and its former chairman Kenneth Lay was one of President Bush’s biggest political contributors. The White House was buffeted by the disclosure last January that Lay had called Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the days leading up to what was then the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history on Dec. 2, 2001.

Enron’s failure, which decimated the retirements of thousands of employees, became the first in a series of scandals that shook public confidence in the stock market and the integrity of corporate America.