A federal judge in Houston Thursday postponed setting a trial date for Enron Corp.’s ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling and Rick Causey, former chief accounting officer, after lawyers cited questions about the massive amount of documentation in the case.

Skilling and Causey were both indicted on criminal charges last month (see NGI, Feb. 23), and lawyers are requesting a four- to six-month delay.

Skilling and Causey, who both pleaded not guilty, were named in a 42-count indictment and are accused of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud; securities fraud involving Enron’s off-balance-sheet financing deals, securities fraud for presentations to stock analysts; making false statements to auditors; and insider trading.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has asked prosecutors and Skilling’s lawyers to update him every two weeks on how they expect to handle millions of pages of documents that pertain to Skilling’s indictment, as well as that of Causey. Lake also scheduled a hearing for March 19 to discuss the U.S. government’s freeze on more than $55 million of Skilling’s assets. Skilling’s attorneys argued that their client needs access to some funds to pay lawyers’ fees and living expenses. Most of Skilling’s assets were frozen when he was indicted.

In a motion filed with the court last week, Skilling’s attorneys said that the “57-page indictment … is massive in scope and challenges the legitimacy of nearly every financial transaction conducted by the country’s seventh-largest company over a three-year-period.” However, prosecutors argued in their court papers that the indictment only focuses on a few specific transactions, not Enron’s entire business. Prosecutors also argued that discovery already underway in other Enron cases will give the defense some assistance.

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