Momentum for reform of the campaign-finance system was growing yesterday, after the US Treasury Department revealed that bankrupt energy behemoth Enron last year asked a top official to intercede with its creditor banks on its behalf.
Enron filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, wiping out the pensions of thousands of employees, in the largest business collapse in US history.
The US Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the company's unravelling, and US President George W. Bush on Thursday created task forces to examine changes to the law to protect pensioners in bankruptcies.
But Enron's ties to prominent politicians -- and efforts to use those connections to arrange a hasty bailout package -- have added another layer of controversy.
Since 1989, Enron has made US$5.8 million in campaign donations -- 73 percent to Republicans and 27 percent to Democrats, according to media reports yesterday.
Nearly half of the congress members in the US House of Representatives and three-fourths of the senators received money from Enron executives, according to the campaign-finance reports filed in Washington. Among the politicians who benefited most from the company's generosity was Bush himself -- first as a candidate for governor of Texas and later as a presidential contender. Bush has received US$623,000 from Enron since launching his political career in 1993, according to news reports in Washington.
The White House has worked to distance Bush from the controversy surrounding the bankruptcy.
"This dog won't hunt. That's a reference to the politics of it," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, rejecting suggestions that the scent of scandal would cling to the administration.
As the White House worked to keep Enron's economic horror story from turning into a political scandal, the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was set to issue 51 subpoenas to employees and board members of Enron and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, a panel official said.
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