Enron founder Ken Lay died of a apparent heart attack yesterday, six weeks after being found guilty of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in US history.
Lay (64) was awaiting sentencing later this year and faced the prospect of spending his last years in jail following his conviction for fraud and conspiracy related to the Enron collapse.
A Lay family spokeswoman released a statement confirming the death but offering no details. Lay's pastor in Houston said that the cause was a massive coronary. Local Colorado authorities said that an autopsy was pending.
Lay built Enron from a sleepy natural gas pipeline company into a symbol of the 1990s' new economy, embracing energy deregulation to trade everything from oil and gas futures to weather derivatives.
But his death means the full inside story of Enron's catastrophic fall will never be known. Historians had hoped Lay might provide a fuller account, from prison or after his release, of what really happened inside the company.
Lay's death is the second associated with Enron's collapse. Company executive Cliff Baxter committed suicide in 2002 as federal investigations into Enron mounted.
Lay, once a confidant of former US president George H.W. Bush and dubbed "Kenny boy" by US President George W. Bush, often appeared to be tired during the four-month trial, but there was no indication that he had suffered any adverse health effects.
Pitkin County sheriff's deputies and an ambulance were dispatched to the Lay vacation home in Old Snowmass, Colorado, early yesterday morning and transported him to Aspen Valley Hospital. He was pronounced dead there shortly after 3am local time.
"A coroner's autopsy is pending. There will be no further information or press release from this office until autopsy results are available later this week," the county said in a statement.
Last Friday, federal prosecutors asked a federal judge to force Lay to pay $43.5 million (€34.2 million) that they said he had received because of his crimes at Enron.
Lay, whose wealth at one time totalled more than $100 million, claimed that he had little money left after the Enron bankruptcy, although prosecutors have said he still had millions in annuities and other investments.
Enron reported record quarter after record quarter results in the late 1990s, becoming a Wall Street darling and icon of the new information economy.
But behind the scenes, the company was piling up massive debts and pushing them out of sight into off-balance sheet partnerships.
When Enron's true financial condition came to light in 2001, investors fled the company, sending its stock price plummeting.
Enron's borrowing costs exploded and the firm collapsed into bankruptcy.
Following Enron's collapse, Mr Lay was often portrayed as an out of touch chief executive who served as the public face of the company, but left the details of running the business to his brainy deputies, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow.
Mr Lay was to be sentenced in October and faced the prospect of spending decades in prison. He planned to mount a vigorous appeal, but legal experts said that he faced long odds.
