HOUSTON, Aug 21: Former Enron Corp. finance executive Michael Kopper on Wednesday became the first insider to plead guilty to a criminal role in the energy giant’s collapse, giving prosecutors ammunition for charges against other former company officials.

Kopper was the chief lieutenant of former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and helped his boss run shadowy Enron-related partnerships that hid debt, inflated profits and sparked Enron’s fall into bankruptcy last December. Prosecutors now appear to have set their sights firmly on Fastow.

Kopper, 37, pleaded guilty to money laundering and fraud charges in a hearing before US District Judge Ewing Werlein in Houston. He will cooperate with prosecutors as part of a plea deal.

The guilty plea alleviates public and congressional pressure for results in the long-running Enron investigation. Although US investigators have made several high-profile arrests of top executives of other companies accused of corporate wrongdoing, they had yet to charge anyone connected to Enron.

Kopper, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, made no comments after he was released on $5 million bond, but stood by as his lawyer apologized for him outside the federal courthouse in downtown Houston.

“Michael hopes these actions demonstrate his deep regret for his own conduct. He apologizes to all whose lives have been affected by what he did,” attorney David Howard said.

Kopper faces a maximum of 15 years in prison for the crimes. The deal with prosecutors requires him to surrender $12 million obtained illegally in his dealings with Enron on behalf of the off-the-books partnerships; $8 million of the total will go to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a separate settlement.

SEC lawyer Luis Mejia said the money, to be paid within 30 days, would go to “Enron victims,” who may include shareholders and former employees.

In his settlement with the SEC, which filed a civil case against him on Wednesday, Kopper agreed to be permanently barred from serving as an officer or director of a public US company.

With Kopper’s plea, federal prosecutors leading the sprawling investigation into Houston-based Enron have snared a high-ranking insider in a position to testify against Fastow and possibly other executives above him.

Enron’s collapse wiped out thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in equity and was the first in a wave of corporate scandals that resulted this summer in the biggest overhaul of US securities laws since the 1930s.

During his pleading, Kopper and federal prosecutor Tom Hanusik described three off-balance-sheet partnership transactions in which Kopper said he funnelled money to Fastow, himself and others without Enron’s knowledge.

In one instance involving the “Southampton Place” partnership, Kopper described a complicated series of transactions that ultimately led to the alleged defrauding of Enron through the use of outside investors.

“They did funnel that money back to me and I then proceeded to give some of that money to the Enron CFO,” Kopper said in a soft, but firm voice. “We never informed Enron of the loans I made or the distributions we got.”—dpa