Monday, May. 12, 2003

Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Unmesh Kher, Lisa Mclaughlin And Sora Song

INDICTED. LEA FASTOW, 41, former assistant treasurer at Enron and the wife of the company's former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow; for fraudulently abetting her already charged husband in various schemes; as part of the government's expanded investigation into the energy giant's collapse, which embellished the case against Andrew Fastow and also included new indictments of seven other former Enron executives, bringing the total number of those charged with Enron-related crimes to 19; by U.S. prosecutors; in Houston.

BARRED. SANDY WEILL, 70, CEO of financial giant Citigroup; from dealing directly with his company's research analysts about investment concerns without a company attorney present; by the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies; as part of a global $1.4 billion settlement with 10 Wall Street firms accused of corrupt stock research; in Washington. The severe Citigroup stipulation, which comes on top of fines and sweeping policy changes required of all 10 banks, follows the disclosure, first reported in 1999, of Weill's efforts to persuade Citigroup analyst Jack Grubman to raise his rating of AT&T, where Weill was a director, from "neutral" to "buy."

DIED. SUE SALLY HALE, 65, trailblazer for women in the clannish sport of polo; of apparently natural causes; at her polo ranch in the Coachella Valley, Calif. Beginning in the early 1950s, when women were still barred, Hale competed as "A. Jones," a mustachioed man. "Gentlemen," she liked to admonish her male-chauvinist opponents, "better boys than you have tried." Bowing in part to pressure from Hale and her friends, who vowed to publicize the fact that she had been duping them for years, the U.S. Polo Association admitted women in 1972.

DIED. ALBERT HAKIM, 66, Iranian-born Silicon Valley businessman and financial guru behind the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s; of a heart attack; in Inchon, South Korea. Hakim masterminded the web of bank accounts used to funnel U.S. weapons and funds to Iran and Nicaraguan rebels. As part of a plea bargain, he paid a $5,000 fine and served two years of probation.

DIED. EARL KING, 69, flamboyant New Orleans rhythm-and-blues man; of complications from diabetes; in New Orleans. Born Earl Johnson, the fiery guitarist with the elaborately upraised coif got his stage name when a typesetter for Specialty Records accidentally garbled his moniker: King Earl. King's hundreds of songs, which included Mardi Gras staple Big Chief and R.-and-B. hits Trick Bag and Come On (Let the Good Times Roll), were recorded by Jimi Hendrix and Robert Palmer.

DIED. PETER STONE, 73, acclaimed writer of Broadway-musical books and screenplays for television and film, who was the first-ever artist to win a Tony (for 1997's Titanic, among others), an Emmy (for the 1960s drama The Defenders) and an Oscar (for the 1964 Cary Grant comedy Father Goose); of pulmonary fibrosis; in New York City.

DIED. RICHARD J. SINNOTT, 76, city censor; in his sleep at home in Boston. From 1955 until 1982 when his position was cut, Sinnott looked over movies, music, plays and strippers to decide if they should be "banned in Boston." He kept the Jackson Five from performing and forced Edward Albee to remove lines from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at a local theater.