Enron boss loses bid for separate trial

FORMER Enron chairman Ken Lay will have to face a trial alongside his former colleagues Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Causey for conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and insider trading, rather than separately, as he had hoped.

A US federal court said that the trio, who presided over the spectacular collapse of the energy trading giant, would not see their rights infringed by a joint trial.

Enron crashed in December 2001 with billions of dollars in hidden debt.

The three former executives had argued that it would prevent a jury from making a good judgment about guilt or innocence.

District Court Judge Sim Lake refused to accept the argument, but ruled that Lay would face four fraud charges in a separate trial, regarding personal loans made to him.

No trial date has been set, and Lay's lawyer Michael Ramsey said a trial was still at least a year away as the defence will need months to sort through millions of pages of documents disclosed by prosecutors.

Ramsey said the delay was the fault of the prosecutors who had passed up his offer to bring Lay alone into court much earlier.

'They had the opportunity to try Ken Lay in November of this year,' Ramsey said, referring to his bid for a speedy, separate trial for the Enron founder.

All three men face one conspiracy charge that they hid Enron's true financial woes from investors. Lay is also charged with six counts of wire and securities fraud.

Skilling, who resigned from Enron just months before it collapsed into bankruptcy, has also been charged with 24 counts of securities and wire fraud and insider trading in addition to the conspiracy charge.