How to Make the Enron Gang Pay /
Execs who ruin companies need to suffer at least as much as the employees whose hopes and retirement funds they pillaged

If the names of the alleged schemers at Enron and Global Crossing ended in a vowel, the pack of them might be cooling their heels in federal detention centers awaiting trial and trying to make bail so steep even Bill Gates couldn't post it. All the while, a posse of prosecutors would be compiling a list of racketeering charges longer than a line of limos at a Mafia wedding.
Of course, there are two reasons that's not going to happen. The first is that these are preppie MBAs with Porsche bank accounts and hired lawyers whose hourly rate could feed a family of four for a month. The second is that their hides have likely been saved by the high-tech executives of Silicon Valley and their Washington lackeys, er, lobbyists.
If the portfolio-bruising dot-com bust wasn't reason enough to detest all those myopic Internet "visionaries," here's one more. Concerned about lawsuits brought by investors who grew tired of getting burned on high-flying stocks, the high-tech industry got behind passage of a law in 1995 that, among other things, went a long way toward protecting corporate executives from prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (see BW Online, 2/11/02, "Enron Shareholder Suits? Not So Fast").