US: Jeffrey Skilling's day of reckoning comes today, when a US judge will sentence the former Enron Corporation chief executive for crimes that led to the fall of the one-time energy trading giant.
He could receive 20-30 years in prison and face millions of dollars in forfeitures. "I think we're going to see a major-league sentence," said white-collar crime expert Kirby Behre.
In May a jury convicted Skilling (52) of 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors as Enron skyrocketed on false profits in the 1990s and then collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001.
Skilling was tried and convicted with the company's former chairman Kenneth Lay but he will be sentenced alone. Lay died of a heart attack on July 5th and his convictions have been voided because he died before he could appeal or be sentenced.
The sentencing, the climactic event in a scandal that came to symbolise a dark era in US business, will be watched closely by investors who lost billions of dollars, and employees and retirees who lost their jobs and life savings.
Skilling is "the highest-profile person left in all those big-name scandals . . . the last step in years of heavy investigation of corporate America," said Mr Behre, a former prosecutor who is now in private practice in Washington.
During the trial, Skilling was depicted as the hard-driving, short-cut-taking architect of a firm gone bad. Witnesses said he falsely inflated earnings by having chief financial officer Andrew Fastow stash debt and losses in off-the-book deals.
Skilling spent seven days on the stand denying guilt and promising to fight the charges for the rest of his life.
Many employees consider him a liar and a cheat.
"The man just totally destroyed our corporation," said retiree Charles Prestwood, due to speak at the sentencing. "He didn't tell us the truth . . . He was just a bad businessman." US district judge Sim Lake, acting under a federal victims rights law, invited victims to submit letters if they did not want to speak. About 50 did so.
Lawyers for employees who collectively lost more than $1 billion in savings plans will speak. "Their lives have been shattered in ways that most Americans are fortunate to have never experienced," they wrote in a letter seeking restitution.