Former Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon Dies in Car Crash Day After Being Indicted

© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.

By Mark Curriden

(March 2) – One day after he was indicted by a federal grand jury, Chesapeake Energy Corp. co-founder and former chief executive officer Aubrey McClendon died in a single car crash Wednesday in Oklahoma City.

Legal sources also tell The Texas Lawbook that McClendon was the subject of a separate and ongoing investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth regional Office.

Oklahoma City police said Wednesday that McClendon appears to have been going at a high rate of speed Tuesday morning when he crashed into a concrete bridge. Police said his body was severely burned.

The tragedy occurred less than 24 hours a federal grand jury in Oklahoma indicted McClendon on charges that he conspired to rig bids for the purchase of oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.

Federal prosecutors claimed that McClendon developed and implemented a scheme from 2007 to 2012 in which a pair of large oil and gas companies agreed to not bid against each other for leases.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that the companies agreed in advance of the bidding process which one would win the bid. The winning company, as part of the conspiracy, provided the other oil company with an ownership interest in the leases.

McClendon, in a written statement, denied the allegations and claimed that he has been “singled out as the only person in the oil and gas industry in over 110 years since the Sherman Act became law to have been accused of this crime in relation to joint bidding on leasehold.”

McClendon has hired two of the most prominent and high profile white-collar defense lawyers in the U.S. to represent him – Chadbourne & Parke partner Abbe Lowell and Williams & Connolly partner Emmet Flood.

For more details about the criminal case, please visit FuelFix: fuelfix.com/blog.

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