the-books partnerships he managed and were well aware they were used to hide billions of dollars of debt. Fastow said a modestly sized $16 million partnership he initially created to help Enron manipulate its earnings was replicated on a much larger scale at Skilling's urging, and eventually raised $386 million from investors to buy Enron assets. "He said to me 'Get as much of that juice as you can,'" Fastow testified. "The juice was the equity, but we were using the juice to increase earnings of Enron Corp. so we could report the numbers we wanted to report." Those private equity funds, named LJM1 and LJM2, earned Fastow millions of dollars in fees and profits as they bought assets from Enron, providing the company with money it reported as earnings. Lay, Skilling and Enron's board of directors agreed to waive conflict of interest issues in letting Fastow operate the partnerships even while he was serving as one of the company's highest officers because it facilitated business deals the company needed. But the company did not publicly disclose Fastow's role in the partnerships, referring only vaguely to them in a footnote in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. "We were using them to inflate our earnings and I don't think we wanted to show people what we were doing," he said.
