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Mitch Daniels: due diligence? Bush''s OMB director and Indiana''s own version of Enron. (Gazette).

Article Excerpt
IN HIS 29 YEARS AS A MAINTENANCE worker for the Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPALCO), James C. Gilmore had never been asked to do anything like it. But in late 2000 and early 2001, according to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana, he was ordered to remove "many carts full of accounting records, minutes of the Board of Directors of IPALCO, and other documents" to a large truck-borne shredder, which was rented from a company called Shred-Tech and parked in the alley behind IPALCO headquarters.

IPALCO at the time was getting ready to merge with the AES Corporation, a Virginia-based global-utility behemoth, in a deal that IPALCO'S managers and board of directors were touting to shareholders--while rushing to dump their own stock before the merger took effect. In fact, the merger quickly turned into a financial disaster for I PALCO stockholders and for the company's workers, whose 401(k) plans were locked into a heavy investment in IPALCO. But the directors and officers by then had cashed out.

What was in the papers that Gilmore carted to the shredder is just one of the interesting questions now raised by angry stockholders, employees and retirees in four class-action lawsuits. The defendants--IPALCO and its officers and directors--include White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mitch...