A report by internal investigators paints former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay as an absent executive who seemed to be always just returning from business trips, had precious little first-hand knowledge of the financial details of the energy trading company that he oversaw, and accepted at face-value the judgments and decisions of his right-hand men.

Lay even conceded that he didn’t know and “would not recognize” the Enron employee, who pocketed around $10 million as a result of his direct investment in the Chewco partnerships. He said he first learned of Michael Kopper, Enron’s managing director of Global Finance, through a Wall Street Journal article last October.

Until then, Lay said he thought the “only related-party transaction” that Enron was involved in was LJM. Ex-CFO Andrew Fastow both managed and invested in LJM, and walked away at least $30 million wealthier — an amount that Lay said “shocked” him.

In a related development, Enron’s new CEO Stephen Cooper, who was brought in last month to steer the company out of bankruptcy, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday that he believed there was “some likelihood that…one or more [former Enron] people could end up going to jail” for their misdeeds.

The 17-page report on Lay includes the “mental impressions, analyses and opinions” of attorneys representing the Enron special investigative committee, which interviewed Lay on Jan. 16. It is not a “verbatim recital” of Lay’s responses. The committee was appointed by the company’s board of directors to look into the questionable off-the-book partnerships that concealed more than $1 billion in debt and are credited with Enron’s swift collapse last year. One of the parties present during the interview was William Powers, who chaired the committee and has since returned to his post as dean of Law School at the University of Texas.

Since Lay refused to testify before Congress, the report offers the first glimpse into the former Enron executive’s account of the unraveling scandal.

The highlights of the report, which was just released by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, include the following:

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