The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Thursday of this week that it has charged Jeffrey K. Skilling, Enron Corp.'s former President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer, with violating, and aiding and abetting violations of, the antifraud, lying to auditors, periodic reporting, books and records, and internal controls provisions of the federal securities laws. The charges, which amend the Commission's Complaint filed against Richard A. Causey, Enron's former Chief Accounting Officer, in U.S.

A criminal indictment against former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling is expected to be handed up sometime this month, sources close to the case say.Two sources, who spoke to the Houston Chronicle last week on condition of anonymity, said federal prosecutors were finalizing criminal charges against Skilling. Specific charges were not known, but the sources said that the Department of Justice investigation has heated up in recent weeks and that information provided by former finance chief Andrew S.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on Wednesday cleared up some of the confusion surrounding accounting for the effects of the new Medicare law.The Medicare Act, signed into law in December, has sparked not only political arguments but also an accounting debate over how companies should book the amount of federal subsidy they expect to receive in their financial statements.FASB’s Wednesday vote confirmed that existing rules governing post-retirement benefit costs should be used.

Boston-based Massachusetts Financial Services Co. reached a tentative settlement last week with regulators whereby it will pay pay $225 million in penalties and cut its management fees by $125 million, according to people familiar with the talks, the Wall Street Journal reported.This would mark the second-largest penalty levied in the ongoing mutual fund investigations. MSF is a subsidiary of Sun Life Financial Services of Canada Inc.

The oil spilled more than 14 years ago, but the fallout continues. A federal judge has ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $4.5 billion in punitive damages and $2.25 billion in interest in relation to the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill that severely damaged the Alaskan environment. Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, will most likely appeal the decision, a company lawyer told Reuters, but no official word came from the company yesterday. The punitive number was once $5 billion but was reduced to $4 billion and now stands at $4.5 billion by U.S.

The ChevronTexaco Corp. says Texaco Inc. overpaid its federal income taxes and is suing the Internal Revenue Service for a $118.6 million refund.Texaco, which was bought by Chevron to form ChevronTexaco in 2001, said in court papers that it should have received tax deductions for some settlement payments it made under a 1988 consent order. The order settled the U.S. Department of Energy’s claim that Texaco had charged more for crude petroleum and refined petroleum products than federal price regulations allowed from 1973 to 1981.The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S.

Who hasn’t been in desperate need of someone’s cell phone number and cursed the lack of cell phone directory assistance? The wireless industry and Congress are debating the logistics and expect to soon have a directory available.Congress is focusing its attention on privacy issues with legislation pending that would require cell phone users to "opt in" to the directory and would prevent the industry from collecting the "unlisted" charges people pay to keep their land line numbers private.

Investors filed more formal grievances against their brokers in 2003 than any other year, and the amount of damages they won nearly tied a 1998 record.The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) received 8,945 cases in 2003, which is 16 percent more than the year prior.

Freddie Mac officials testified before the House Financial Services subcommittee on government-sponsored enterprises and let lawmakers know that the agency expects to spend upwards of $200 million to correct accounting problems that led to a $5 billion restatement of earnings last year.Freddie Mac, the nation’s No. 2 mortgage finance company, replaced its top three executives last June in the wake of an accounting investigation.