Vincent Kaminski

Who is Vincent Kaminski?

Vincent Julian Kaminski was born in Poland and worked as the Managing Director for Research at the failed energy trading corporation Enron until 2002. In this capacity he led a team of approximately fifty analysts who developed quantitative models to support energy trading. In the months preceding Enron’s bankruptcy Kaminski repeatedly raised strong objections to the financial practices of Enron’s Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Fastow, designed to fraudulently conceal the company’s burgeoning debt.

The primary practice involved hiding Enron’s debt in partnership companies managed by Fastow and financed by outside creditors. The debt was then secured against stock in the Enron Corporation itself, which was strongly valued at that time. To induce creditors to assume the risk of financing this debt certain "trigger events" were built into the contracts which would require immediate repayment of the full loan amount, such as the decline of the stock value used as collateral below a prearranged level.