** NAB - downside - Breaking News Link to Enron

NAB linked to Enron deals
MELBOURNE|Published: Monday August 26, 8:05 AM

National Australia Bank was involved in a controversial $US400 million ($A734 million) deal with the collapsed US energy trader Enron, according to legal evidence in the United States, The Age newspaper said.
Enron faces two class action court cases filed in the US on behalf of thousands of Americans who lost their life savings in the company.
The NAB deal, given the name Firefly, was described in one of the legal claims as a scheme to move hundreds of millions of dollars in borrowings off Enron's books in 1998 and 1999, The Age said.
The claim, filed in Houston Texas by America's leading class action lawyers, Milberg Weiss, described Firefly, along with other similar schemes, as "manipulative devices", the paper said.
NAB's involvement in the Firefly deal surfaced after confidential internal bank documents were released by a Congressional committee investigating the Enron scandal a few weeks ago, The Age said.
Among the documents is an internal memo from the US Citicorp group naming NAB as a member of two groups of lenders, it said.
A spokeswoman for NAB in Melbourne is quoted as saying the bank "would not knowingly participate in any off-balance-sheet financing structures that had the principal aim of manipulating a company's balance sheet or their profit-and-loss statement".
She said the bank had to rely on the statements it was given by clients as being true and fair, "just like anyone else".