Andrew Fastow (l), former Chief Financial Officer of Enron, is escorted from the federal court building in shackles by a Federal Marshall in Houston, USA, to start his 6 year prison sentence imposed by the federal judge, Wednesday. (Reuters Photo)

HOUSTON, USA, Sept. 27--Andrew Fastow, the mastermind behind financial schemes that doomed Enron Corp., was sentenced to six years in prison--four years less than he had agreed to in a plea bargain--by a judge who felt he deserved leniency.
According to AP, Fastow, the former chief financial officer who cooperated with prosecutors in other cases related to Enron’s 2001 implosion, had agreed to serve a maximum 10-year term when he pleaded guilty in 2004.
But the judge said he deserved a lighter sentence because Fastow has been persecuted after Enron’s failure and because his family has suffered enough. Fastow’s wife already has served a year for her role in the scandal.
“Prosecution is necessary, but persecution was not,“ US District Judge Kenneth Hoyt said. “These factors call for mercy.“
Fastow’s attorneys had asked for a lighter sentence, citing Fastow’s admission of guilt and his help in the successful prosecution of Enron founder Kenneth Lay and the former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling.
Rod Jordan, chairman of the Severed Enron Employee Coalition, said he was shocked and disappointed that Fastow was given a reduced sentence.
“I felt that anything less than 10 years was a slap in the face to the employees who suffered so much because of what Fastow did,“ he said. Hoyt “didn’t have to stick with the agreement but I think he should have. Maybe the judge knows something I don’t. Do the crime, do the time.“
Fastow was taken immediately into custody after the judge rejected his request to turn himself in later.
Fastow must serve all six years because there is no parole in the federal system. He also was sentenced to two years probation after his release from prison.
Enron, once the nation’s seventh-largest company, crumbled into bankruptcy proceedings in December 2001 after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.
Fastow was originally indicted on 98 counts, including fraud, insider trading and money laundering. He pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy, admitting to running various schemes to hide Enron debt and inflate profits while enriching himself. He also surrendered nearly $30 million in cash and property.

BEIJING, Sept. 27--Chinese planners have approved construction of a multibillion-dollar pipeline to carry gas imported from Turkmenistan to China’s southern business center of Guangzhou, AP quoted a news report as saying Wednesday.
The pipeline will be able to carry some 30 billion cubic meters (1 trillion cubic feet) of gas a year from the Central Asian nation, Dow Jones Newswires said, citing an unidentified person familiar with the plan.
It cited the source as saying the pipeline’s cost could run into tens of billions of dollars.
The project would double the capacity of an existing pipeline that carries gas from the Xinjiang region of China’s northwest to Shanghai on the east coast, Dow Jones said.
China signed a deal in April to buy gas from Turkmenistan, but didn’t release price details.
China is trying to expand use of natural gas to reduce reliance on dirtier oil and coal. It also is discussing with Russia the construction of a pipeline to deliver Siberian gas to northern China.
China will publish a white paper on its energy policies to apprise the global community about the nation’s energy development strategy, which has caused global concerns.
The white paper is under the joint compilation of the Energy Bureau and the Institute of Macro Economics, both under the under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top planning body.
The white paper will raise China’s energy strategy and goals as well as elaborate the country’s energy policies and measures that have been taken, an official with the Energy Bureau said.
The official said the white paper aims to increase the transparency of China’s energy policies to build up a good international environment for the country’s energy development.

MOSCOW, Sept. 27--Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sought to alleviate Western concerns over Russian energy deals on Wednesday, saying talk of revising production sharing deals or pushing foreigners out of the sector was unfounded, Reuters quoted Russian news agencies as reporting.
A recent barrage of threats from Russian officials to withdraw an ecological permit for the Shell-led Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project have sparked fears that Russia wants to renegotiate the production sharing agreement (PSA).
“Assertions about ’revisions’ of PSAs and especially about squeezing foreigners out of the Russian energy sector have absolutely no basis whatsoever,“ RIA news agency quoted Lavrov as telling a conference on Russia’s Pacific Sakhalin Island.
“Carrying out checks in no way means that licences for developing deposits within the Sakhalin-2 project will be withdrawn,“ RIA news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.
On Tuesday, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said work on the Royal Dutch Shell-led Sakhalin-2 project could continue while a full-scale ecological probe, due to start on Oct. 25 and last a month, is held. Shell was not immediately available for comment.
Shell has come under fire from Russia after admitting the project would cost $20 billion, twice as much as it originally estimated, complicating talks on a strategic swap of assets with state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom.
The doubling of Shell’s costs has also infuriated Gazprom, which wants to take an equity stake in Sakhalin-2. The project will supply liquefied natural gas to export markets such as Japan and Korea.
Concerns were also raised about the neighbouring Sakhalin-1 PSA project run by Exxon Mobil, after industry sources said oil pipeline loading had been suspended for technical checks.
Exxon Neftegaz, a group uniting Exxon and its partners in Sakhalin-1, has said it was unaware of any order to suspend work and business is continuing as usual.
The head of Russia’s technical standards agency RosTekhNadzor told the Sakhalin conference that he hoped Sakhalin-1 would be able to deal with any breaches of the rules at its De Kastri terminal before its planned launch on Oct.1, RIA reported.
The head of Exxon Neftegaz Steven Terni said the issue needed to be sorted out, but that the scheduled launch of the terminal was possible.

TOKYO, Sept. 27--Japan’s former premier Junichiro Koizumi mesmerized foreign investors with his impassioned mantra of reform but analysts say the economy seems a lower priority for new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, AFP said.
Abe has made clear that mending tattered regional ties and revising the post-war constitution are top of his agenda and looks set to put off unpopular tax rises for as long as possible.
“It is quite obvious that Abe’s interest lies with foreign policy and security issues, not the economy,“ said Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief economist for Japan at investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston.
“His economic reform ideas are quite simple--to delay tax hikes and in the meantime try to reduce spending,“ he added.
Abe himself was quick to address worries among investors that he may not have the same hunger as Koizumi for overhauling the world’s second-largest economy, telling the nation he would continue with structural reform.
Without economc growth, there could be no fiscal reconstruction, the new premier stressed.
Koizumi leaves office still widely popular after setting out to cap public spending, clean up banks’ bad debts and break up the post office with its three trillion dollars in assets that were used to bankroll “pork barrel“ politics.
Financial markets gave a cautious response to Abe’s new team, which, though well versed in economic issues, contains faces largely unknown to foreign investors, the driving force behind the market’s sharp rise last year.
“As a whole, the new cabinet seems lackluster, particularly in the eyes of overseas investors,“ said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management.
Yet while Abe himself is focused on foreign policy, there are signs that his ministers will carry the torch of reform for him, analysts said.
Hiroko Ota, the new minister of economy and fiscal policy, vowed to tackle social welfare reform as she took over from veteran Kaoru Yosano, a staunch advocate of reform who was dumped by Abe.
Abe also ditched Sadakazu Tanigaki--a strong supporter of a sales tax rise--as finance minister and replaced him with Koji Omi, 73, a former trade ministry bureaucrat and ex-science policy minister.
Many economists see tax hikes as inevitable to rein in Japan’s ballooning national debt which at more than 150 percent of annual economic output is the highest among industrialized countries.
The new cabinet is also expected to favor low interest rates to aid Japan’s economic recovery after over a decade wallowing in deflation, analysts said.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 27--Leaders of Caribbean nations shared the spotlight at the UN General Assembly to warn that the future of their tropical islands was clouded by the ways the world economy is run.
According to AP, Caribbean nations need more trade benefits from the richer, industrialized countries--and less greenhouse gases and hazardous materials, said leaders of five island nations who spoke at the UN on Tuesday.
Foreign Ministers of Grenada, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Bahamas and Dominica stressed their countries’ commitment to the UN Millennium Goals which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and fight disease, including AIDS. The speakers noted some success--but emphasized that further progress depends on outside help.
St. Lucia Foreign Minister Petrus Compton said that the goals adopted by world leaders at the 2000 Millennium Summit “represented a belated admission that the development of every nation is a collective responsibility.“
A favorable trade regime was the central theme in the discussion of international assistance.
Grenada Foreign Minister Elvin Nimrod criticized the July suspension of the Doha round of trade liberalization talks, and complained of the “unfortunate reality that special and differential treatment for small and vulnerable economies is fast becoming a thing of the past.“
Compton said that World Trade Organization rulings are “adversely affecting the access of our banana exports to preferential markets,“ and that the WTO “has become synonymous with pain and suffering for farmers“ in St. Lucia and other Caribbean nations.
“The international community must come to grips with the fact that ’one size fits all’ approach is inappropriate and impractical,“ Compton said.
Their Jamaican counterpart, Anthony Hylton, said that the international community needs to make adjustments for “the differences in levels of development among the economies and the asymmetries that exist between developed and developing countries.“
“Fundamental to a viable and equitable trade regime is the need to take account of the wide disparity in structural characteristics and approaches to economic policy among the many members of the WTO, and the consequent need for flexibility,“ he said.
On other issues, Caribbean ministers called for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions which scientists blame for global warming, and of shipments of hazardous materials across the Caribbean.

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept. 27--Labor unions and opposition leaders in several Colombian cities protested conservative President Alvaro Uribe’s economic and trade policies for the first time in his second term, AFP said.
Former president Cesar Gaviria, who heads the Liberal Party, said Uribe’s policies lack social welfare.
“We support the hopes and gains of the workers,“ said Gaviria, who governed Colombia 1990-1994.
Colombia’s biggest labor federation (CUT) said it had been pressured not to lead the protesters, which union leaders claimed numbered nearly a million, paralyzing traffic in Cali, Medellin, Neiva and Cucuta. CUT President Carlos Rodriguez said the demonstrations were a “show of community spirit and of democracy.“
Protests were peaceful, except for the use of explosives in Barranquilla for which police arrested one man.
The center-left Democratic Alternative Pole party also participated as did the Network Action Against Free Trade Uribe took office on August 7.
This is while Colombia’s economy expanded a faster-than-expected 6 percent in the second quarter, adding to speculation that central bankers will keep raising the benchmark lending rate to curb consumer spending.
The growth rate was the fastest since the third quarter of 2005 and followed an expansion of 5.5 percent in the first quarter, the National Statistics Agency said.

GENEVA, Sept. 27--Commercial fishing methods threaten to devastate Europe’s oceans, Reuters quoted WWF International as saying on Wednesday.
The Swiss-headquartered environmental group, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, noted that up to 80 percent of some North Sea plaice catches are thrown overboard dead or dying due to their small size.
Two sharks are killed for every one swordfish caught illegally off Morocco for the European market, WWF said.
It urged European governments to crack down on wasteful fishing practices.
“The trail of destruction behind industrialised fishing must be stopped or our children will be left with a barren ocean,“ said James Woolford of the WWF’s European fisheries campaign.
In a report, the group said bottom-trawling for Norwegian lobster, also called scampi and langoustine, is devastating the sea floor and starfish, shellfish and crustaceans.
As much as a third of Atlantic bluefin tuna catches come from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, mostly by EU fleets, the group said. Stocks of cod have been severely depleted in recent years.
West African fleets hauling fish, shrimp and squid for European consumption have also badly depleted marine resources, threatening food and income security in that region, WWF said.
It urged European consumers to buy fish from well-managed fisheries, identified with the Marine Stewardship Council product label.