Topeka ? Investigators painted two former top Westar Energy Inc. executives as being more interested in building their personal fortunes than building their company.

In a 367-page report released last week, investigators working for Westar’s board of directors said David Wittig, the company’s former chief executive officer, and Douglas Lake, the former chief strategic officer, abused their power and sought to enrich themselves.

The report said they misused corporate aircraft, falsified flight logs, tried to squash dissent, engineered lavish bonuses, misled directors, tracked workers’ phone calls, monitored how employees who owned stock voted in shareholder elections and even did a background check on a newspaper reporter.

But the report appears aimed at more than cataloguing corporate excesses. The report seems designed to build a case that Wittig and Lake are not entitled to the $81.6 million in severance payments called for under employment agreements with Westar.

“I think they probably took the opportunity to be pretty harsh,” Jim Zakoura, an Overland Park attorney representing large Westar customers, said of investigators. “But I have to say I think the conduct justifies it.”

Wittig resigned in November as Westar’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, to concentrate on his defense against federal fraud charges unrelated to Westar business. Lake has been on indefinite administrative leave, with no indication he will return. By late Friday, neither had publicly responded to the report.

How much the company owes Wittig and Lake remains a potentially expensive issue.

For 2002, Wittig was to receive $9.9 million in compensation and Lake, $5.5 million. However, the company describes all but $2.8 million for Wittig and $1.6 million for Lake as “contested.”

Such figures pale in comparison to what Wittig and Lake could receive as severance, because their employment agreements called for lifetime payments from Westar after they left the company.

Zakoura suggested that ultimately, how much Wittig and Lake receive is likely to boil down to how their contracts are interpreted — possibly after a court battle.

“In our opinion, senior management, particularly Mr. Wittig, at times placed their own interests above the interests of the company, in breach of their fiduciary duties,” the report said.

At points, the report said, Wittig and Lake misled other directors or kept information from them.

For example, the report concludes that Wittig and Lake “relied on deception and omission” to obtain board approval last year of a plan allowing them to trade overvalued Westar stock for undervalued stock in Guardian International Inc., a security alarm firm in which Westar had obtained an interest.

The report said the two men even timed their exchange so that they would receive “a double dip” dividends on both the stock they were giving up and the stock they were obtaining.

“Finally, Messrs. Wittig and Lake not only were aware of the valuable benefits they were misappropriating at the company’s expense, it seems that they could hardly contain their excitement,” the report said.

The investigators added: “We were told that immediately after the board meeting in which the exchange offer was approved, Messrs. Wittig and Lake were observed in a hallway near the meeting room, high-fiving in celebration.”

Such strong statements are common in the report and leave the impression that Wittig and Lake repeatedly failed to live up to their responsibilities to the company — and ultimately, to shareholders.

That’s a case Westar might have to build in court if it wants to avoid paying millions of dollars in severance to Wittig and Lake.

“It certainly paints Mr. Wittig and Mr. Lake in a very bad light — there’s no doubt about that,” Zakoura said.