The lighter sentence imposed on former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow seems justified if he is cooperating with lawyers seeking to recover losses for company investors. The jailed executive has given the plaintiffs a 25-page declaration and is prepared to do a full deposition, reports the New York Times.

Fastow has reportedly told lawyers that he saw some banks as problem solvers - the go-to guys when he needed temporary finance to create the bogus partnerships that boosted Enron’s bottom line and eventually hid most of its massively failing enterprises. The banks are probably going to have to settle somewhere along the line and most of the lost money won’t be recovered for shareholders.

I feel a little bit sorry for the bankers. Enron was offering them a no-lose situation and they had probably drunk lots of the Enron Kool-Aid, which taught them to think that Enron really was the revolutionary face of new business. And Fastow’s contrition right now is an easy choice. He may feel remorseful but assisting the plaintiffs’ lawyers has obviously helped his own cause.