Enron founder Kenneth Lay has admitted in court that he tried to contact potential witnesses during his fraud trial.
Lay acknowledged he tried to go through a friend to contact Vince Kaminski, a former top risk analyst at Enron, nine days before Kaminski testified for the prosecution. A federal prosecutor suggested Lay was trying to get his story straight.
"I was trying to reach Vince Kaminski a long time ago before I even knew he would testify," Lay said yesterday. "I was trying to reconnect with Vince, to talk to him about some issues I wanted to talk to him about."
Mr Kaminski told jurors he got a cold reaction when he told Lay and other executives in October 2001 that Enron needed to "come clean" on questionable financial structures in the weeks before it crashed into bankruptcy proceedings.
Lay, who is on trial along with former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, said he was not aware Mr Kaminski was on the government's witness list. He has appeared on that publicly available list since November.
Lay also admitted he tried to call two Goldman Sachs & Co. executives during the trial to talk about a September 2001 meeting about Enron. Lay and former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow have given contradicting testimony about the meeting.
The Goldman executives had been on a defence witness list. Lay said he called the executives in March - the same month Fastow testified - but he said he did not try to align their memories of the meeting with his.
"I was just trying to make sure that all of my facts were as accurate as they could be," Lay said from the witness stand, and he claimed that Fastow "gave a fake version of that meeting".
Fastow testified he and Lay met with Goldman to discuss restructuring Enron at the same time Lay was telling employees and reporters that the company was sound. Lay says the meeting was about Enron's vulnerability to a takeover.
Lay faces six counts of fraud and conspiracy from when he reprised the role of CEO following Skilling's abrupt resignation in mid-August 2001. Skilling faces 28 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors related to his activities from 1999 to 2001.
AP