Enron CEO Gets 24 Year Sentence

In what was termed as one of the biggest scandals in US corporate history, former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling has been sentenced to more than 24 years in jail for massive fraud and conspiracy.

Shareholders at Enron, once the seventh-largest company in the country, lost billions of dollars in stock and retirement savings.

Skilling, 52, who had faced a maximum of 185 years in jail, told the court he planned to appeal his conviction stemming from the 2001 collapse of the Houston-based energy giant under shady deals.

Skilling's co-defendant in the massive fraud case, Enron founder Kenneth Lay, died of heart failure in July earlier this year. Lay's convictions on 10 counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in two separate cases were wiped out with his death.