Fastow to detail banks' involvement in Enron

Andrew Fastow, Enron’s disgraced former CFO, is preparing to spend six days with an army of lawyers in a bid to prove the involvement of several banks in the defunct energy giant’s fraud scandal.

The detailed deposition, due to start in the next few weeks, is expected to require the efforts of 80 lawyers to process.

Before he was sentenced to six years in jail last week Fastow denounced a number of banks including the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays claiming the institutions had helped devise the schemes that concealed billions of dollars in losses.

Barclays hit out angrily at the allegations as it told the Telegraph: ‘Andrew Fastow is a convicted felon. When he made this declaration it was part of an effort to reduce his sentence. That is what convicted felons do.’

After pleading guilt, Fastow became the prosecution’s key witness, testifying against his former CEO Geoffrey Skilling and ex-chairman Kenneth Lay, which led to the maximum ten-year sentence being cut by 40% to the six-year term.

Skilling, who subsequently died of a heart attack and Lay were both convicted of fraud. The ex-chairman will be sentenced later this month.