The White House acknowledged last night that Vice President Dick Cheney tried last summer to help Enron secure payment on a $64 million debt owed to it by a large Indian energy project.
White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer, insisting that the intervention was made with "national interest" in mind, stressed that Mr Cheney's broaching the subject with Indian opposition leader Ms Sonia Gandhi in a June 27th meeting was a perfectly legitimate way to help protect US jobs and taxpayers' money.
"The president views the job of the United States government and its central function as to help protect American jobs, whether those are a result of investments overseas that help create jobs at home or jobs domestically," he said.
Mr Fleischer said protecting American workers' jobs is "a central function" of the government, and added that Cheney had merely inquired about the gas project in Dabhol, India, in which Enron had invested $2.9 billion and in which the taxpayer-backed Overseas Private Investment Corporation was also involved.
The project, Dabhol Power Company, was Enron's biggest overseas investment. "What he did was, he asked about the status of the project," Mr Fleischer said.
"It is an important project to create jobs in America, and there's also a taxpayer exposure as a result of the work that's being done through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which is a government agency."
The Dabhol power plant shut down in May 2001 after the state utility that was its only customer failed to pay its bills. Enron had obtained a $302 million loan for the project from the Export Import Bank, another federal agency that gives loans to US businesses that are operating abroad in ways that private financiers find too risky.
AFP