Enron Task Force prosecutors are investigating whether Linda Lay, the wife of Enron’s former Chairman and CEO, Kenneth L. Lay, engaged in illegal insider trading by selling Enron stock days before Enron filed its chapter 11 case on December 2, 2001.
The particular sale in question involved 500,000 shares of Enron stock that was sold through a Lay family foundation. The foundation proceeded to distribute the $1.2 million in sales proceeds to various charitable organizations.
The investigation of Mrs. Lay is a part of the Task Force’s scrutiny of the Lays’ actions during the weeks immediately preceding the filing of Enron’s bankruptcy case. Sources close to the case indicate that other transactions that have not yet been publicly disclosed are also a focus of that investigation.
Mr. Lay’s lawyer, Michael Ramsey of Houston, responded to the embarrassing disclosure by publicly criticizing the Task Force’s motives and alleging that the disclosure is simply the latest ploy by the government to to bring pressure against Mr. Lay to plead guilty. “This is the last gasp of a dying prosecution,” Mr. Ramsey said. “This is an attempt at extortion. If I tried something like this, I would be indicted.”
Don’t give this bunch of prosecutors any ideas, Mike.
The investigation of Mrs. Lay is focusing on a sale that she placed on behalf of the foundation on the morning of Nov. 28, 2001. That morning, Mrs. Lay apparently placed an order for the foundation to sell its Enron shares sometime between 10 and 10:20 a.m. At 10:30 a.m. that morning, Dynegy and Enron issued press releases informing the public that Dynegy was calling off its proposed purchase and merger with Enron. The news hammered the value of Enron shares as they sunk by more than $1.50 a share almost immediately after the press releases and closed at $.60 per share by the end of the day. The foundation sold its shares at a price of $2.38, which generated proceeds of about $1.2 million. Had the sale occurred the next day, it would have generated about $300,000.
As noted above, this transaction is only one of several others in which the Lays engaged that the Task Force is currently examining that could result in an indictment of Mrs. Lay and additional counts against Mr. Lay. Public disclosure of the other transactions being investigated would be just as embarrassing for the Lays as this one. The Task Force is putting the pressure on Mr. Lay to turn on his co-defendants in his pending criminal case — former Enron CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling and former Enron chief accountant Richard Causey — and the level of that pressure will continue to increase over the next several months.

In an expected move, former Enron Corp. CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and former Chief Accounting Officer Richard Causey filed a motion Monday stating that Phoenix, Denver or Atlanta would be fairer places in which to try their criminal case than Houston.
Because of the intense negative publicity and public feelings in Houston surrounding Enron, the defendants contend that they cannot receive a fair trial in Houston. The three men have been charged with leading a wide-ranging conspiracy to hide extensive financial problems at Enron.
The first criminal trial involving Enron’s business operations recently was concluded in Houston in what is commonly known as the Nigerian Barge case, where the jury found four former Merrill Lynch & Co. executives and a former Enron vice president guilty of participating in a scheme to manipulate Enron’s earnings. A sixth defendant — Sheila Kahanek, a former Enron accountant — was acquitted.
In the motion to change venue, the Skilling legal team supplied results from surveys they had commissioned of public attitudes in Houston toward the former Enron president. According to the surveys, nearly 32% of the people surveyed in Houston used negative statements to describe Skilling, which was roughly three times the number in Phoenix or Denver. The survey revealed that Houston residents used such terms as “despicable,” “deceitful,” “thief,” “weasel,” “the devil” and “guilty as sin” to describe Mr. Skilling, in particular.
A request to change venue is not uncommon in high-profile cases such as this one. However, there is substantial risk in requesting one. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake will decide the issue and, if he is inclined to grant the motion, he will choose the new location for the trial. So, for example, if Judge Lake decides to move the venue of the trial from Houston to another location within the Southern Federal District of Texas, the case could be transferred to an even more unfriendly venue for the defendants, such as the Rio Grande Valley of Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the Valley, a predominantly Hispanic jury pool will likely not take kindly to a group of wealthy white executives on trial for defrauding investors. Accordingly, like almost everything associated with the case, the motion to change venue is high risk, a lesson that Mr. Lay learned recently in regard to another motion that he had filed.
On the other hand, if there was ever a case for a change of venue, it’s an Enron defendant in Houston. Inasmuch as the prosecution batted .833 on a flimsy case in the recently concluded Nigerian Barge trial, the government would be justified in concluding that they are shooting fish in a barrel by prosecuting Enron defendants in Houston.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake >ruled unexpectedly on Tuesday that former Enron Chairman and CEO Ken Lay will face two separate criminal trials — one with former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling and former chief Enron accountant Richard Causey, and another one in which he will be the sole defendant.
To put it mildly, this is not the result that Lay’s lawyers expected.
Judge Lake refused to separate Lay, Skilling and Causey into three discrete trials as all three had requested. But Lake did separate the government’s four criminal charges against Lay relating to his personal banking into a second trial that would be tried separately from the Enron-related charges against the three former executives.
Causey and Skilling are each accused of 35 or more counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading in a scheme to manipulate the earnings of Enron to enrich themselves. Lay is accused of only 11 charges, seven of which relate to fraud and conspiracy at Enron and four of which relate to his personal banking.
In all likelihood, unless Lay presses the issue, the trial of the banking charges against Lay will be postponed until after the trial of the three former executives takes place, which means that they likely will never be tried. Regardless of the outcome of the first trial as to Lay, the government will likely cut some type of deal with Lay on the banking charges. My best guess at this point is that the trial against Lay, Skilling and Causey will crank up in mid-2005.
In another Enron-related development, the ongoing trial of the Nigerian Barge criminal case has been postponed for the rest of the week because U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein became ill. Assuming the trial begins again next Monday, there is a good chance that the trial will conclude by the end of next week.

In this Washington Post op-ed, former Enron chairman and chief executive officer Kenneth Lay makes the following disclosure and asks a very reasonable question:

At my request, my lawyers have filed motions in federal court asking for an immediate and speedy trial on the charges I face. To facilitate this, I offered to forgo discovery and to waive a jury trial, leaving it to a judge to determine my guilt or innocence.
Why, then, is the Department of Justice not willing to agree to an immediate and speedy trial?

And as one who should know, Mr. Lay thinks he knows the reason — politics:

My July 8 indictment was announced at a news conference in Washington. The acting attorney general, James Comey, referred to what had previously been known as the Enron Task Force as “The President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force.” Never mind that the phones are still answered “Enron Task Force” and that’s what the letterhead on the stationery reads.
Comey described the Enron investigation as the most prominent among those being overseen by this presidential task force. He said: “Our joint mission is to bring corporate criminals, corporate crooks [i.e., Ken Lay] to justice in this country.”
Well, if my indictment is “the most prominent” in this effort, why can’t we get on to trial? Perhaps, as my lawyers said in a court filing, it’s because the acting attorney general was “unable to determine whether he was announcing an indictment or holding a political rally” and finally decided on the latter. Some other statements at that rally:
? Linda C. Thomsen, deputy director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission: “[T]he president’s corporate task force, which celebrates its second anniversary tomorrow . . . [has demonstrated that] just the mention of the name Enron evokes images of duplicity and greed.”
? Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark W. Everson: “[T]he corporate culture of Enron guided by Mr. Lay is now synonymous with corporate fraud and greed at its worst. And Enron’s crooked ‘E’ logo depicts the corporate management team at Enron — crooked.”
Are these signs of a dispassionate prosecution of crime? To me they look more like part of a political campaign.

Mr. Lay has a point and he makes it well:

Now, I know about politics. I have been active for years and I ask neither sympathy nor special treatment. But justice is a different issue. The tragic circumstances surrounding the collapse of Enron and the harm it caused to so many victims is something I will take to my grave. My inability to save Enron is one of my greatest regrets. But I am guilty of no crime and eager to prove my innocence. Our Constitution guarantees justice and a speedy trial. Yet, without the agreement of the president’s task force, as hard as I may try, I may not be granted either.
I would ask James Comey and Andrew Weissmann: With justice in the balance, do you have a real case, based on the law and not on politics? Subject to the judge’s schedule, meet me in court before November, and agree to a stand-alone trial, with or without a jury — your option. If you agree to a non-jury trial, the trial can begin and end before the election. It will determine not only whether the charges against me are “significant” but also whether they are “real.”

Overall, I agree with Mr. Lay, although his fixation on a trial before the November elections seems somewhat contrived. My sense is that Mr. Lay will get his speedy trial — severed from that of his co-defendants, Messrs. Skilling and Causey — and that the trial will likely begin some time early next year. Given the normal progression of these types of cases, that’s not unreasonable.
But Mr. Lay’s larger point is valid — the way in which the Government has handled the Enron criminal cases has elevated politics far beyond justice, and that is not a good thing.
Almost three years now after Enron spiraled into bankruptcy, the Enron Task Force has not prosecuted a single trial involving a former Enron executive (the first is scheduled to begin on September 20 in the Nigerian Barge case). Rather, the Task Force has take the approach of sledgehammering former Enron executives with multi-count indictments so that each of the executives is faced with the prospect of what amounts to a life prison sentence if they risk attempting to defend themselves against the charges. In the meantime, just to make sure that the public perception remains biased against anything having to do with Enron, the Task Force makes public statements and disclosures about its indictments that strongly imply guilt and wrongdoing.
And where the Government does not have the grounds in a case to justify the prospect of a life sentence, the prosecutors have no problem making them up. They did just that recently in the Nigerian Barge case in a superceding indictment prompted by the Supreme Court’s recent Blakely decision that placed the federal sentencing guidelines into question. On a $25 million deal in which neither Enron nor Merrill Lynch lost a dime, and in which the basis for the Government’s allegation that a “true sale” did not occur was not even discovered until well after Enron had gone into bankruptcy and its stock had become worthless, the Government now claims that the “damage to the market” resulting from the Nigerian Barge transaction was $80 million.
There is no factual basis for that allegation. The only reason that it has been made is to justify a sentence at the harshest levels of the federal sentencing guidelines. And this in a case that is so weak that it likely would not have been prosecuted but for the fact that the Task Force currently believes that it can play on the extraordinary public bias against Enron to obtain a conviction against anyone who was associated with the company.
So, why should we care? Wasn’t Enron just a house of cards run by some bad folks at the top? Aren’t they just getting what they deserve? Who cares if the Government simply makes things a bit more efficient by obtaining plea bargains rather than convictions after protracted trials?
Well, Professor Ribstein has one very good reason that the fair adminstration of justice is important to anyone who is interested in the promotion of business and risk taking:

[Mr. Lay] is entitled to fairness whether he’s a businessman or not. But it’s important because he is a businessman to send the right signals to future entrepreneurs about how risk-taking behavior is going to be treated.

But there is also another even more important reason that the Government should dispense with the political wrangling and get on with the fair administration of justice against the former Enron executives — that is, because that process protects you and me.
I made the same point several months ago in connection with the Martha Stewart trial by passing along the following dialogue from the fine movie, “A Man For All Seasons“.”
In this insightful scene, one of Sir Thomas More’s apprentices — Richard Rich — confronts Sir Thomas while Sir Thomas is conversing with his wife, daughter, and his daughter’s fiancee, Will Roper (an aspiring lawyer). Rich begs Sir Thomas for a political appointment, which Sir Thomas proceeds to refuse because Sir Thomas knows that Rich is prone toward corruption and would never be able to resist the bribes that he would be tempted to take in such an appointment (Sir Thomas thought Rich should be a teacher). After an embittered Rich leaves Sir Thomas and his family, it is obvious to Sir Thomas’ wife, daughter, and Roper that Rich is resentful and will ultimately betray Sir Thomas, which indeed Rich does later in the movie. That leads to the following dialogue:

Wife: “Arrest him!”
Sir Thomas: “For what?”
Wife: “He’s dangerous!”
Roper: “For all we know he’s a spy!”
Daughter: “Father, that man is bad!”
Sir Thomas: “There’s no law against that!”
Roper: “But there is, God’s law!”
Sir Thomas: “Then let God arrest him!”
Wife: “While you talk he’s gone!”
Sir Thomas: “And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!”
Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
Roper: “Why, yes! I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down–and you’re just the man to do it, Roper!–do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”
“Yes,” Sir Thomas concludes. “I’d give the Devil the benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

Ken Lay is entitled to the speedy and fair administration of justice. I am hopeful that he receives it, not so much for his sake, but for ours.

It was only a matter of time.

As expected, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and chief accountant Richard Causey filed motions with the U.S. District Court in Houston Friday requesting that their pending criminal case be severed for separate trials. Their motions mirrored a similar motion that their other co-defendant — former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay — filed earlier this month.
Frankly, all three defendants can make a good case that they should be tried separately. Mr. Lay has far fewer charges pending against him than either Messrs. Skilling and Causey. Indeed, four charges against Mr. Lay involve personal banking matters that do not even relate to Enron’s business. On the other hand, Messrs. Skilling and Causey are each accused of 35 or more counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading in a scheme to manipulate Enron’s earnings while getting rich personally.
In his motion, Mr. Skilling argues that the indictment against Mr. Causey and him “strains” to link Mr. Lay and him, and that the jury deciding Mr. Skilling’s fate should not be tainted by evidence introduced against Messrs. Lay and Causey. On the other hand, Mr. Causey — who is not nearly as well known as either Mr. Lay or Mr. Skilling — argues that the jury in his case should not be prejudiced by the noteriety of his better-known co-defendants who would be sitting next to him in a joint trial.
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has not yet set a trial date for any of the cases against the three men. Mr. Lay has requested a trial as soon as possible. Enron Task Force prosecutors have requested March 2005 trial, while Messrs. Skilling and Causey have requested a March 2006 trial.

You know that the criminal cases related to the demise of Enron Corp. are a different breed of cat when articles such as this appear in the Houston Chronicle explaining what former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling are going in their spare time while preparing for trial:

Enron’s two former top guns are keeping busy — one doing court-ordered charity work at a warehouse and the other pulling together a self-explanatory Web site.
Ex-Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling has been seen doing menial chores at a Houston Habitat for Humanity warehouse and ex-Enron Chairman Ken Lay and staff are working on an Internet site to present information he wants the public to know about his case.
Skilling is fulfilling a magistrate judge’s order that he do charity work by mopping up and doing other chores at a Houston Habitat for Humanity warehouse. . . U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy required that Skilling, whose lawyers said preparing his legal defenses was his full-time job, also perform community service while on bond.
Skilling’s codefendant ex-Chairman Ken Lay is working with his staff preparing a Web site not yet ready for viewing.
Lay has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of conspiracy and fraud relating to his last months at Enron and four felonies relating to fraud in his personal banking. . .
Kelly Kimberly, Lay’s publicist, said they are in the process of developing background on Lay and up-to-date information on his case.
When last contacted about the Web site, www.kenlayinfo.com, Kimberly said no launch date had been chosen.

Is it just a matter of time before the Justice Department hires publicists and and creates websites for the prosecution?

William Anderson is an economics professor at Frostburg State University and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. Here is an earlier post in which Professor Anderson challenged the reasoning behind an indictment earlier this year of several former executives of Houston-based Reliant Resources.

In this article that he co-authored with California attorney Candice E. Jackson, Professor Anderson challenges the conventional wisdom that the indictment of former Enron chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay is justified:

The “prosecutor as hero” theme reverberates in the media. What follows (from the July 19, 2004, edition of U.S. News) is typical of the state-worshiping press in the wake of the Lay indictments:

The federal prosecutors mopping up after corporate scandals can remember the summer of 2004 as their season of sweet victory. Last week a jury convicted Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and his son Timothy Rigas of conspiracy, bank fraud, and securities fraud. A judge denied Martha Stewart’s bid for a retrial and will deliver her sentence this week. And charges finally reached the top in the biggest case of all when a grand jury indicted former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay on 11 criminal counts, including bank fraud, securities fraud, and making misleading statements.

One would remind people that the supposed pursuit of “justice” is not a game in which we have “victory.” These are legal procedures that destroy families, incarcerate talented people, and eviscerate legitimate business firms, apparently so that U.S. attorneys can bask in the glory that only the news media can provide.

Indeed, in Professor Anderson’s view, Mr. Lay is a political prisoner:

Ken Lay is a political prisoner. To put it another way, the charges against him are political, not criminal in nature. He was in charge of a company that had a spectacular fall, which is not a surprise, given that Enron was riding the crest of a speculative bubble that almost certainly was going to burst.

And such criminalization of ordinary business behavior likely would not change under a Kerry Administration:

The problem with the Lay indictment, according to Kerry, whose campaign advertisements tout his experience as a prosecutor, is that it did not come soon enough; Bush’s friendship with Lay delayed what Kerry claimed should have been done three years ago.

This is disconcerting, to say the least. It took a long time for the DOJ to put together a case against Lay that even is presentable, and the indictment itself presents a weak (but politically charged) legal case. Kerry’s response makes one wonder if he even believes that Lay should receive a fair trial at all — or, for that matter, even a trial, as opposed to summary judgment or the infamous military tribunals.

Professor Anderson is particularly unimpressed with the substance of the indictment:

Indictments are written for maximum effect, and Lay’s is no exception. . . Yet, after one slogs through the 65 pages or so (another ploy by the government to imply guilt — the longer the document, the more guilty someone must be) in the federal indictment, one is struck by the lack of criminality.

The most “damning” charges stem from stock sales Lay made after it became clear that Enron was headed for trouble. Yet, his behavior during this whole episode does not square with the criminality that the government is alleging. For the most part, Lay held the bulk of his investments in Enron stock. When some of his financial advisors told him to diversify, he insisted on borrowing against his Enron stock to purchase other securities.

However, at times he received margin calls, which means that the borrower must produce cash immediately; the only thing he could sell quickly was his Enron stock, but then he also continued to purchase that stock even in the face of company problems. At the same time, he urged employees to purchase the stock, as he was doing.

Or, as the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins put it shortly after Enron filed its chapter 11 case, “if Mr. Lay was committing securities fraud, he was shooting himself in the foot while doing it.”

Professor Anderson then decries the media and the government’s unwillingness to confront the weakness of the criminal case against Mr. Lay and the fact that he really does not have — under the inflamed circumstances surrounding Enron’s demise — any realistic chance of receiving a fair trial:

These matters are public record, yet news accounts have made statements like “he was quietly dumping his Enron stock at the same time that he was urging employees to buy more,” which says more about the integrity of U.S. mainstream journalists than it does Lay’s stock sales. Even a cursory glance at the record demonstrates that reality is not what the government is claiming. But then, neither the government nor mainstream journalists are bound by truth; nothing should get in the way of a good story or a politically popular indictment.

[W]we are pessimistic about Lay’s chances of avoiding conviction. His jurors most likely will consist of middle-class individuals who are loyal to the U.S. Government and will be of the mentality that anyone in the dock must be guilty by definition. Since the media has a vested interest in having been “right” in its demonization of Lay, it is doubtful that the coverage of the trial and pre-trial activities will change in its pro-prosecution, pro-government bias.

Professor Anderson then notes that Mr. Lay’s failures are better dealt with in the civil justice system rather than the criminal justice system:

It’s doubtful that Lay is guilty of criminal activity, especially in the sales of Enron stock. However, as the chairman of the firm, he had fiduciary responsibilities to the firm and stockholders. Moreover, many of the decisions he made, in good faith or not, resulted in huge business losses for investors, not to mention employees who purchased large blocks of Enron stock.

These matters are better suited for civil, not criminal court. Historically, this has been the venue where issues like this were argued and — at least to a point — resolved. By muscling into this legal realm, U.S. attorneys not only are criminalizing acts that are not traditionally criminal, but they also ensure that the people who should be receiving real justice are left out.

In closing, Professor Anderson provides a disturbing insight into the current psyche of American society in regard to business leaders:

There is no doubt that there will be cheering when Lay’s guilty verdict is announced and he is sentenced to what effectively will be a life term in prison. Americans have become people who enjoy watching others suffer — particularly watching leaders fall from grace — and perhaps one should remember that business executives have wives and children who also will have loved ones incarcerated for many years.

While U.S. attorneys are not providing bread and circuses to the masses, they are giving the public the next best thing: public humiliation of wealthy executives and their families, many of whom have committed the crime of being successful. Others, apparently, have committed the crime of not being successful enough.

Read the entire piece. As Professor Ribstein aptly notes in his blog today regarding yesterday’s post about the Global Crossing, Ltd.:

Yes, it is true, that the market often got it wrong during the speculative bubble that ended with Enron. But as I’ve discussed, many people share the blame for this mass delusion, not least investors themselves. We are going to find as these cases go to trial that there are nuances here the headlines have missed, and that raise serious doubts about dealing with these cases as criminal matters.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake denied former Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay‘s motion for a September trial date during a hearing on Wednesday, but agreed that Lay was entitled to a quick trial. Judge Lake did not set a trial date for the Lay case during the hearing.
Judge Lake ordered counsel for Mr. Lay, former Enron CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling, and former chief accountant Rick Causey to make all their arguments about why each wants to be tried separately and said he will rule on those requests by early October.
Messrs. Causey and Skilling are each accused of 35 or more counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading in a scheme to manipulate the earnings of Enron to enrich themselves. Mr. Lay is charged with 11 counts, seven of which related to fraud and conspiracy at Enron and four of which relate to fraud in banking of his Enron stock.
In a particularly insightful question while reviewing the defendants’ request to move the trial to another jurisdiction, Judge Lake asked during the hearing:

“Just out of curiosity, what district court in this country do you think would be free of any publicity of the demise of Enron?”

Judge Lake also chided Mr. Lay’s lawyer, Mike Ramsey, who had conducted a press conference at the courthouse after filing the motion for a speedy trial in Mr. Lay’s case on Monday. “Why don’t you save the press conference until after this hearing?” the judge asked Mr. Ramsey with a wry smile.
Mr. Lay’s strategy for a speedy trial is based on the fact that that the charges against him focus on the period immediately preceding Enron’s bankruptcy. Messrs. Skilling and Causey face charges that focus on a wide range of activities that occurred over several years.

In an astounding move in a case of nearly unprecedented negative publicity, Ex-Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay requested U.S. District Judge Sim Lake today to grant a speedy trial — even possibly waving a jury trial to get it — in pleadings filed today in his pending criminal case in Houston.
Mr. Lay, who is presently facing 11 criminal charges in the same case as former Enron CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling and ex-chief accountant Richard Causey, requested that Judge Lake sever Mr. Lay’s case from that of Messrs. Skilling and Causey, and commence the trial of Lay in mid-September, just a month away.
Mike Ramsey — Mr. Lay’s criminal counsel — estimated that the 11 criminal counts against Mr. Lay can be tried in three weeks to Judge Lake and about eight weeks if a jury hears it. In addressing the media at Houston’s federal courthouse while filing pleadings on behalf of Mr. Lay today, Mr. Ramsey chided the Enron Task Force prosecutorial team for allegedly politicizing Mr. Lay’s criminal case in inflammatory prosecutorial press conferences.
Mr. Lay’s request for a speedy trial is a high risk strategy, but there are few alternatives in defending an Enron-related case that are not high-risk because of the noteriety of the Enron. The big fringe benefit of a quick trial to Mr. Lay is the severance of his case from that of Messrs. Skilling and Causey, who Mr. Lay will likely portray as being in control of the day-to-day affairs of Enron.
Also in pleadings filed today, the Enron Task Force noted that Lay has set aside $15 million to a legal defense fund, which Mr. Ramsey contended is not accurate because of the illiquid nature of a large portion of the assets transferred into the fund. Even with that hefty war chest, Mr. Lay is still running second to Mr. Skilling, who socked away $23 million of cold, hard cash in his legal defense fund.
The Enron Task Force is opposing Mr. Lay’s request for a September trail date, but has proposed a fairly quick schedule that includes a March 2005 trial date. As one would expect, the Task Force prefers to try all there defendants together.
Judge Lake has scheduled a Wednesday hearing to discuss a trial date for the Mr. Lay’s case.
Somewhat overshadowed in today’s developments is the fact that, more than two and a half years after Enron collapsed into bankruptcy, the first criminal trial involving former Enron executives is currently scheduled to begin in Houston next Monday before U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein in the case known as “The Nigerian Barge case.”