Founder

After six days of quarreling with the prosecutor — and at times his own lawyer — Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay completed his turn in the witness chair early Tuesday, telling jurors that he loved Enron and that watching it collapse into bankruptcy was “the most painful thing” in his life.

Federal prosecutor John Hueston finished his cross-examination of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay on Monday, focusing on Lay’s apparent ignorance in late 2001 of the company’s financial problems. And in a “gotcha” moment before passing the witness, Hueston told the jury that Lay’s wife sold 500,000 shares of Enron stock just hours before the official news was released that a merger between Dynegy Inc. and Enron had failed.

As courtroom pundits saw it, Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay’s turn on the witness stand would be a no brainer. Well-known Houston philanthropist and Bush crony, many of Lay’s close associates and friends have called him a disarming, affable and somewhat avuncular sort of fellow, likely to remember small details about his employees’ personal lives and not prone to micromanaging the business. He was expected to be the calm and steady “nice” guy, unlike co-defendant and ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, whose brash personality has often preceded him.

Federal prosecutor John Hueston’s cross-examination of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay was more polite on Thursday, but a couple of “gotcha” moments appeared to catch Lay off guard. Speaking to a packed courtroom, Hueston sparred with Lay about the six criminal charges against him, but the prosecutor also managed to land a couple of sucker punches, including the humiliating revelation that Lay’s own son had been a short seller of Enron stock in March 2001.

In what is shaping up to be some of the most riveting testimony to date in the trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, federal prosecutor John Hueston began a tense cross-examination of Lay on Wednesday, accusing the former chief of attempting to influence witnesses and breaching Enron’s code of ethics.

In his second day on the witness stand, Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay on Tuesday continued to lay the blame for the company’s collapse on bad press reports, which he said misled investors.

After years of living the American dream, the past six years have been an “American nightmare,” Enron Corp. founder Kenneth L. Lay said Monday in his fraud and conspiracy trial. Lay, 64, who faces several years in prison if he is convicted on a half dozen criminal counts, took the stand in his defense for the first time, attempting to convince jurors in Houston he had done no wrong in the months before Enron collapsed.

Kenneth Lay, the founder and former chairman of Enron Corp., takes the spotlight in a Houston courtroom on Monday to answer charges that he conspired to commit securities and wire fraud in the three months before Enron declared bankruptcy in December 2001. Lay’s testimony comes just a few days after former CEO Jeffrey Skilling took his turn in the witness chair, maintaining his innocence on 28 criminal counts.

Former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling said Wednesday that he and company founder Kenneth Lay were a “good team” that never knowingly broke the law. On a day in which he defended himself against 28 fraud and conspiracy charges, Skilling claimed he “was aware of no illegal activity occurring at Enron” while he served as the company’s COO, president and CEO.