Sunday, April 12, 2009

 

BC Hydro connected to Accenture to Arthur Andersen LLP and Andersen Consulting to the downfall of Enron

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There has always been active resistance to selling BC Rail. But few British Columbians at the start of the BC Liberal regime had any way of knowing how far things had gone - not after voting for the gang who promised NOT to sell the railway. Over the next while, I will be searching out reminders of the long, hard battle some people fought, to keep and protect first, BC Hydro and then BC Rail. - BC Mary.
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Nettleton makes link between Enron and Accenture, calls for energy minister's resignation

The Free Press NEWS - April 6, 2003
PRINCE GEORGE BC


Paul Nettleton has stepped up his fight against what he says is the privatization of BC Hydro.

The Prince George-Omineca Independent MLA called for Energy Minister's resignation Thursday over the issue of contracting out BC Hydro support services to Accenture.

The government did not respond to the request, either in the Legislature or in follow-up questions. Neufeld was not available for comment.

Nettleton, however, maintains Neufeld should resign after he admitted for the first time Accenture's connections to Arthur Andersen LLP and Andersen Consulting, the firms linked to the downfall of Enron.

"It appears that BC Hydro and the B.C. government are now helping Accenture legitimize or launder itself into an onshore, made-in-B.C. company," Nettleton said in the Legislature. He says provincial government claims that Accenture is a B.C.-based company are wrong.

He points out that Accenture's two appointees to the board of directors of Accenture Business Services of B.C., the company that will carry out the support services contract, have direct links to Andersen Consulting. One of them, he said, worked directly with Enron.

Etienne Deffarges held the position of global managing partner with Andersen Consulting, he said. He will now hold the same position with Accenture Business Services of B.C.

Deffarges' specialty, according to an article in Utility Business Magazine, is "portfolio strategy, privatization, foreign investment, mergers and acquisition".

Nettleton said he also has information showing Deffarges, in a presentation to the third annual Enertech Forum, bragging about Accenture's success in making Enron Corp. a clear winner in revenue growth in 1999/2000.

Enron collapsed shortly thereafter.

"The minister has made my case for me by acknowledging the Enron connection," said Nettleton.

He argues his evidence proves the government is privatizing BC Hydro. He further says they are doing so with a company employing many of the same players using the same ethics as they did in the Enron case."

Neufeld was travelling and could not be reached for comment Friday.

In his response to Nettleton in the House, he suggested Nettleton was painting the new Accenture with the wrong brush.

"We should not say that anyone that ever worked for Andersen Consulting, Arthur Andersen or Enron are all bad people," he said, adding later: "I'm going to reiterate that Andersen Consulting is gone. We're dealing with a company called Accenture Business Services, actually incorporated in British Columbia with a head office in Vancouver."

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Pacific Gazette has an astute interpretation of this story. It's headlined: What's Past Just Might Be More Than Prologue.

Full story at http://pacificgazette.blogspot.com/

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Comments:
Accenture via Wikipedia

" SNIP........Movement of jobs outside the U.S.

Accenture has been criticized repeatedly by Lou Dobbs of CNN and others for moving many jobs outside the U.S., resulting in loss of work and employment for some U.S. citizens. This is because Accenture utilizes Global Delivery Centres in South Asia and Southeast Asia (such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai in India, and, Manila and Cebu in the Philippines) to reduce cost and increase profit margin in outsourcing deals with major U.S. companies. This enables Accenture to perform work (such as software development and call centre support) at a greatly reduced employee cost as compared to U.S. employees.

As of October 2007, Accenture employs more people in India than in the U.S...................."

SNIP

And Canada too.
 
I find the following, from the piece, interesting in the extreme:

"It appears that BC Hydro and the B.C. government are now helping Accenture legitimize or launder itself into an onshore, made-in-B.C. company," Nettleton said in the Legislature.

Why?

Well, would it not suggest that, perhaps, Accenture/Anderson might have been involved in more than just the privatization of BC Hydro back during the salad days of Mr. Campbell's massive sell-off of public assets?

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Paul sacrificed his political career - although he was one of those guys who didn't fit with any political party - and probably saved BC Hydro, at least to this point. After Nettleton raised the spectre of its destruction, there was no way Campbell would dare prove him right.

I voted against Nettleton in two elections, although I always liked the man. It's a shame what's become of political discourse.
 
From the Vancouver Sun today:


SNIP

"Also next week, the bench will consider another B.C. legal saga that began more than five years ago, when police raided the provincial legislature and later charged two high-ranking Liberal aides with corruption......................" SNIP
 
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Thanks 6:33 ... you needed eagle-eyes to have spotted that weird little reference in a dumpsterful of "legal saga(s)" ...

Vancouver Sun is not even clear whether the news article is referring to BC Supreme Court (Vancouver) or Supreme Court of Canada (Ottawa).

So far as I know, Ottawa on April 22, 2009 is the only court considering Basi Virk and the secrecy demanded by Bill Berardino, the Special Prosecutor.

And btw, why do you think it's only Basi Virk here ... and Aneal Basi isn't mentioned?

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Shame on the BC Liberals for doing businesss with the remenants of Enron/Arthur Anderson.
 
Hi Mary,


As an employee of BC Hydro, I want say, what this Gordon Campbell government is doing to BC Hydro and ALL the assets of BC is disgraceful and as were slowly finding out it’s probably much, much worse than that.

Can’t wait until we get a good look at the books………….and follow the money!!



This is a little off subject but I wanted to share my observations of some of the tactics being used by our TV media as we have the run up to the election.


First, about two weeks ago I watched a report on Global that looked into the virtues of P3s. This report claimed that all the P3s were on time and on budget as they looked at the projects individually. Now, we the people that have been paying attention would know that this is a flat out lie. How can there NOT be law against a broadcaster lying to the people of BC.Global news should have to reverse its stance and apologise for misleading the public.


Then I watched a CBC BC report about a week ago on “the parties are getting ready for the election”. The report started out by talking about Gordon Campbell and had video of same as they told the story. This was 2/3 of the story and the other 1/3 of the story was on the greens getting prepared for the election with video to match, the ndp were not mentioned or even shown on video, it’s like the ndp were not even running in the election at all.


Carole James was a guest on the program Voice of BC with host Vaughn Palmer last week and again someone from Shaw forgot to flip the switch for the Sunday rebroadcast, so the repeat program was not aired. As you and your readers may remember that this forgetting to throw switches at Shaw have happen only three times now ……….two were with Carole James as a guest and the other was when the program subject was about the raid on the legislature. This seems to me, a pattern that will be hard to defend.


Speaking of forgetting to throw the switch, the legislature has rebroadcast the legislature’s business on the weekends as far as I know starting last spring and has its broadcast/rebroadcast times on their web site. This past sitting I have looked for that rebroadcast every weekend but could not find it at all, not once, this whole sitting. I contacted the ndp to see if this non-flipping of switches was the responsibility of a public employee forgetting to do their job repeatedly for weeks and weeks on end or was it up to the some local broadcaster or some kind of information suppression by the Campbell government. Unfortunately the ndp said their kind of busy with the up coming election to look into the matter. Which seems reasonable enough but it also seems to me this should be looked into and dealt with.


Can you imagine all of the discussions that have taken place between editors and the public affairs bureau/lobbyist/Gordon Campbell for the last few months in an attempt to line up those ducks?



This truly is a sad state of affairs we bc’ers have gotten ourselves into.
 
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