AP: Three former Enron insiders to testify against Lay, Skilling

Associated Press
Three former Enron insiders to testify against Lay, Skilling
Feb. 21, 2006

HOUSTON - The next three government witnesses in the fraud and conspiracy trial of former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are hardly household names but may still deliver testimony that is devastating to the defendants.

They include two government cooperators -- one of whom pleaded guilty to insider trading -- and a former in-house accountant who found financial chaos at a retail energy unit that Enron founder Lay and former Chief Executive Skilling touted publicly as a robust business that would bring in billions of dollars.

Prosecutors' next witnesses will be Paula Rieker, who in May 2004 pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading; Wes Colwell, the former top trading-division accountant who paid the Securities and Exchange Commission $500,000 to settle allegations of manipulating earnings; and Wanda Curry, a former accountant who found contracts overvalued by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rieker was the top lieutenant to Koenig before becoming the company's corporate secretary. During more than seven days of testimony, Koenig said he, Skilling and Lay -- at different times throughout 2001 -- misled Wall Street and employees about the company's finances. Rieker admitted that in July 2001 she cashed out stock options upon learning that the company's broadband unit lost tens of millions of dollars more in the second quarter than Skilling had earlier told Wall Street the division would lose for the entire year.

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