Almost lost amidst the publicity over the first day of testimony in the Enron-related Lay-Skilling trial was the news that a Virginia federal grand jury had issued indictments against former General Re Chief Executive Ronald Ferguson, former General Re Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Monrad, General Re’s former Assistant General Counsel Robert Graham, and the former AIG reinsurance executive Christian Milton on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud for their roles in a controversial five-year-old transaction that has been at the center of the governmental investigations into AIG and General Re over the past year.

Of course, AIG is Maurice “Hank” Greenberg’s old company and General Re is a division of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Ferguson and Ms. Monrad are now the two highest-level former General Re executives to be charged with crimes in the General Re-AIG accounting investigation, and Mr. Milton is the only former AIG executive to have been charged in the probe. Last summer, two former General Re employees — John Houldsworth and Richard Napier — copped pleas on fraud charges and presumably will testify against the newly-charged executives.