Three former employees of the UK's National Westminster Bank Plc were accused of skimming US$7.3 million from an Enron Corp partnership in the first criminal fraud charges to emerge from the US Justice Department's investigation into the energy trader's collapse.
The former bank officers, Gary Mulgrew, Giles Darby and David Bermingham, secretly invested in an Enron off-the-books partnership and siphoned off income that "rightfully belonged to their employer," prosecutors said.
The charges show the Justice Department's determination to follow all leads in the Enron investigation, said Leslie Caldwell, who heads the probe. The investigation includes banks that provided billions of dollars in loans to Enron and bank officials who may have benefited personally.
"We intend to address the conduct not only of Enron, but also of those who capitalized on Enron's willingness to enter into accounting-driven transactions that lacked business purpose," Caldwell said.
The charges against the three men were spelled out in papers filed in federal court in Houston. A civil suit filed last week in New York against Royal Bank of Canada said the three had worked for National Westminster, or NatWest, in London and were hired by the Royal Bank of Canada in May 2000.
Canada's National Post has reported that Royal Bank of Canada asked them to resign in November to avoid damaging the Toronto-based bank's reputation.
Officials at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which acquired NatWest in April 2000, didn't return calls seeking comment about the investigation.
The three accused men couldn't be reached for comment. Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, said authorities believe the three are "in the United Kingdom."
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