Three former British bankers pleaded guilty yesterday to a single charge of wire fraud in a case connected with the Enron scandal.
David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew, dubbed the 'NatWest 3' pleaded guilty in the US state of Texas to conspiring with two former Enron executives to defraud the NatWest bank of $19m.
The former bankers subsequently divided $7m among themselves.
The three men accepted a plea bargain that will see them serve 37 months in jail. Prosecutors dropped six other fraud charges in exchange for the guilty, enabling the trio to avoid a possible maximum sentence of 35 years.
A lawyer for the men said that after 17 months of isolation while awaiting trial in Texas, the trio decided to accept a plea deal in order to 'move forward and do more productive things with their lives.'
Although the men have not spent any time in prison, they were required to remain in the Houston area.
They will be sentenced on February 27 and face a maximum penalty of five years in jail for the single fraud count.
The trio said they will apply to serve their sentence in Britain.
Thousands of people in the US lost their jobs and life savings when Enron collapsed in late 2001 with an estimated $40 billion in debt, hidden through financial deals and often kept off the books of the Houston-based energy trading group.
The scandal undermined faith in corporate America and led to a massive stock-market sell-off.
