WASHINGTON, Jan 3: The US Congress said it will launch a fourth inquiry into the “troubling” collapse of Texas-based energy giant Enron and the “ripple effects” its bankruptcy has had on its workers, customers and even the US economy.

Announcing the probe at a press conference Wednesday, Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s Governmental Affairs committee, questioned whether the US government could have done more to protect those impacted by Enron’s troubling and precipitous collapse.

Lieberman said the “untimely and wholly unexpected” demise of a behemoth like Enron “is an alarm call, a wake-up call to all of us in government to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect the integrity of our markets and the savings and investments of the American people.”

He vowed that the inquiry would be a search for the truth, not a witch hunt.

The panel’s first hearing on the matter is scheduled for January 24, one day after Congress reconvenes from its winter recess, Lieberman said.

Something was very rotten in the state of Enron, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, added at the conference.

A lot of knowledgeable people on Wall Street were either duped, didn’t care or purposely went along for the ride at the expense of thousands of others, he said, adding that “something this massive should not ever happen again.

Levin said his subcommittee — which will be issuing document subpoenas to Enron’s top brass, directors and auditors within a week — would first investigate Enron’s board of directors, looking into the appropriateness of the actions that the board took preceding and during the collapse.

Lieberman said the Enron matter raises several “troubling questions,” such as whether the government could have done more (or) should have done more to have warned us earlier about the fact that something was very wrong at Enron.

He also questioned whether federal agencies should be accorded more authority to help protect all of us from having another Enron occur.—AFP