CSFB Execs Subpoenaed About Work for Enron

Credit Suisse First Boston investment banking chief Adebayo Ogunlesi and six other executives of the brokerage have been subpoenaed to testify about transactions they performed for Enron Corp., a bankruptcy examiner said Thursday.

Neal Batson, the lawyer named by the Justice Department to investigate Enron’s collapse, asked a bankruptcy judge to force the executives to appear or face contempt-of-court charges.

CSFB and Deutsche Bank arranged the sale of $915 million of notes for an Enron partnership in July 2001, five months before the energy trader filed for bankruptcy protection.

Batson released a 2,147-page report Wednesday, providing the most detailed description yet of the deceptive accounting practices that helped pump up Enron’s finances.

The report lists the sale of $915 million of notes arranged for an Enron partnership called Marlin Water Trust II as one of the deals Batson is investigating. Marlin Water Trust II’s three-year, interest-bearing securities, backed by Enron stock, were designed to move debt off Enron’s books from the firm’s money-losing water venture, Azurix.

CSFB cited a previous court order by Bankruptcy Court Judge Arthur Gonzalez as justification for its delay in responding to the subpoenas. The judge told the parties to coordinate testimony with shareholder lawyers where it was “practicable.”

“We’re not refusing, we want to coordinate the deposition with the civil litigation so everyone only has to testify once,” a CSFB spokeswoman said.