"In hindsight, the transaction appears to have required little effort, but I can't tell you the effort involved," he said of the deal.

If there have been problems, the transaction usually appears with one or more of up to 90 error codes beside it.

The gathering of data was compounded by the facts that all financial transactions appeared to have been in cash rather than cheques, he said.

One recent transaction, recorded in local property records this summer, did not appear on the list, which stopped with the last tax return.

On the surface transactions appear to involve an employee asking with his Adult for suggestions from his manager.

The transactions, the examiner said, do not appear to be real sales but disguised loans.

Enron's transactions appear to have been structured to fall under that rule.

The companies projected that a transaction would be concluded early in the third quarter of 2008, and that appears to be the case.

A regulator suggested that the reason may have been to make the transaction appear to comply with accounting standards.

But the transaction appeared to have less to do with politics than with numbers.