SAN ANTONIO – More than 20 years after the Enron disaster, the man who first blew the lid off the Houston-based energy company’s fraudulent deals is sharing why he came forward and what he hopes people learn from the scandal.
“Lots of people were hurt,” said James Timmins.
Timmins was the director of private equity at Enron, back when the company was synonymous with success.
“Any business unit worldwide which wanted to access that market had to come through me. So, we had one voice out in the public, in the institutional market…So, I saw a lot of opportunities that Enron was pursuing,” he said in a Zoom interview (watch the full clip below.)
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But Timmins’s feelings toward Enron changed in 1999, when he noticed something.
“I saw too much potential fraud, self-dealing, self-enrichment at the expense of Enron shareholders,” he said.
Timmins said when inconsistencies didn’t add up, he spoke with managers. When they disagreed, he walked away.
“I quit because I felt like the activities that were being conducted by a senior group of officers at Enron were potentially illegal. They were fraudulent,” he said.
But it was more than a year before Timmins was proven right. About 18 months after leaving the company, he anonymously came forward to the Wall Street Journal, and told reporters what he knew.
“I did it to put it in the public market, and hold those accountable who needed to...
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