Trial date looms for Enron execs

The former Enron top executives are facing over 3 dozen counts of insider trading, fraud and lying.
February 24, 2005: 7:58 AM EST

HOUSTON (Reuters) - More than four years after the dramatic collapse of Enron Corp., a federal judge on Thursday is expected to set the start date for the criminal trial of former company chiefs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

Their trial, which is likely to begin later this year, could last several weeks as prosecutors try to prove the two men and co-defendant Richard Causey, the former chief accounting officer, played key roles in the financial chicanery that hid billions of dollars in debt and inflated profits at the Houston company.

Skilling, the former chief executive officer, and Causey are each facing more than three dozen counts of insider trading, fraud and lying on Enron financial statements.

Lay, the former Enron chairman and friend to President Bush, is charged with a handful of counts of fraud relating to the company's final months, when he stepped back into the CEO spot after Skilling's sudden resignation.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/24/news/newsmakers/enron_trial.reut/

The judge has not been sympathetic.

From the article: The judge in the case, District Court Judge Sim Lake, has previously denied motions by the defendants to hold separate trials and to move the case out of Houston, where the defendants argued the negative publicity surrounding Enron's demise would make it impossible to get a fair trial.

No, these guys are not really popular in Houston.

it took them four years to get these guys on trial? Damn, looks like * has been working HIS ass off.

* and the Rs in Congress are hyping private accounts alternatives for SS, a venture in to the Enronization of accounting for SS.

Those things, Texas schedules like a chili contest: See y'all next Monday, and we'll have the death chamber fired up and ready to go by Friday.

But a trial over money. Well, now we're talkin' about something really important. That takes time, and you really want to be sure you're dotting all the t's and crossing all the i's.

campaign contribution histories:
Ken Lay
Andrew Fastow
Jeffrey Skilling

Ken Lay sold big blocks of his Enron stock every day that the stock market was open (sometimes twice a day) for more than a year before the collapse of the Enron house of cards. Lay personally made hundreds of millions of dollars on these transactions knowing full-well that the day of reckoning was coming. All that time he was assuring the employees that their 401k accounts, which were limited to Enron stock, were safe and solvent. Fat bastard!