Former Enron executive found dead in an apparent suicide

Associated Press

HOUSTON — A former Enron Corp. executive who reportedly complained about the company’s questionable accounting practices and resigned last May was found shot to death in a car Friday, an apparent suicide.

J. Clifford Baxter, a 43-year-old former vice chairman of the energy giant, was found dead in a Mercedes-Benz parked on a median not far from his home in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. He had been shot in the head.

Police said a suicide note was found. Its contents were not disclosed.

Baxter resigned several months before Enron’s collapse in the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Enron’s sudden downfall and accounting practices are being investigated by federal prosecutors, the FBI, securities regulators and 11 congressional committees and subcommittees.

The House Energy and Commerce committee had asked to interview Baxter. He had not been subpoenaed, and no date had been set for an interview.

"Our investigators were interviewing someone else and his name came up," said Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa.

Baxter had also been named in a federal lawsuit accusing him and other Enron executives of reaping huge profits on Enron stock before its collapse.

Baxter was identified by name in the explosive warning that Enron executive Sherron Watkins wrote last August to company chairman Ken Lay.

"Cliff Baxter complained mightily to (then-CEO Jeff) Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM," Watkins wrote. LJM is one of the partnerships that were used to keep half a billion dollars in losses off Enron’s books.

Watkins’ letter to Lay warned that "we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals" unless the company changed its ways.

Baxter’s body was found around 2:30 a.m. by a police officer checking on a car parked in a residential area. He was in the driver’s seat, shot with a revolver.

He had joined Enron in 1991 and was chairman and CEO of Enron North America before being named chief strategy officer for Enron Corp. in June 2000 and vice chairman in October 2000, the company said.