The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) attacked ex-Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay in federal court this week, claiming Lay had “demonstrated a frankly whimsical approach” toward constitutional protection against self-incrimination, and asked the court to put an end to “this charade” by compelling him to turn over 870 pages of documents it has requested for nearly two years.

Since February 2002 — three months after Enron declared bankruptcy — the SEC has requested certain documents from Lay, and many of them have been turned over to the commission. However, Lay’s attorneys have argued that some of the documents requested are “personal” and not “corporate,” and Lay has refused to comply, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In court documents, Lay’s lawyers have argued that the documents in question are Lay’s “thought process.”

However, the SEC sued to obtain the documents in late September in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (03 1962). The SEC claims that Lay should be compelled to turn over the documents, in part because he has been inconsistent in invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. Initially, said the commission, Lay produced some documents without claiming his constitutional protection, but then later he asserted it. The SEC also said it was an “outrage” that Lay had produced some of the same records for Enron’s bankruptcy examiner earlier this year while refusing to give the same documents to the commission.

According to the latest filing, Lay agrees that he “has no Fifth Amendment right to withhold corporate records” but will not give them to the SEC unless the commission agrees to distinguish which records are personal and which are corporate. The SEC said it will not agree to those conditions, stating, it is “not for the SEC to make the initial determination that records held by Lay are corporate or personal.”

SEC lawyers Luis Mejia and David Bloch wrote in a filing that “Lay’s continued refusal to designate and produce corporate records to the SEC, unless the SEC ‘agrees’ to his terms, is an outrage and belies his self-serving and disingenuous claim that he is fully cooperative with the SEC.”

©Copyright 2003 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.