June 27, 2002, the Enron Task Force announced they had charged Gary Mulgrew, David Bermingham and Giles Darby with wire fraud against their employer, Greenwich NatWest, in a series of deals involving an investment in a partnership formed by Enron CFO Andy Fastow.
The Southampton deal was odd for several reasons, the first being that when the NatWest Three realized there might be some irregularities involving Fastow, they reported themselves to British authorities. If they were truly guilty, it makes one wonder why they were so eager to speak to the very people who could punish them.
Secondly, the guts of the accusation against them (that they vastly under-reported the value of an asset, urging Greenwich NatWest to sell at far below market value) was refuted by the so-called victim itself. NatWest said the asset was fairly appraised.
Third, the extradition process that would ensue for the NatWest Three would become a nightmare. The three British citizens, who worked for a London bank, would find themselves at the mercy of the post-9/11 weirdness that surrounded America’s attitude toward all foreigners, not just those carrying suicide belts but quite proper and ordinary citizens like the NatWest defendants. The US claimed authority to pluck three British citizens and deposit them in US courts. The NatWest Three pleaded to be tried in British Courts, which was where the supposed crime occurred, and where – not incidentally – witnesses and evidence of their innocence remained. But the US eventually won that battle, and the defendants were hauled before a Texas court where they were forced to plead guilty to an absurd crime and sent to American prisons, some five thousand miles from their families.
