Farmland finds buyer for Lawrence equipment

A Houston company plans to buy large amounts of equipment at Lawrence’s shuttered Farmland Industries nitrogen fertilizer plant, moving the 467-acre facility one step closer to becoming ready for redevelopment.

Farmland spokeswoman Sherlyn Manson announced late Tuesday that a bid of $725,000 from JAS Marketing had been accepted by the Kansas City, Mo.-based company and the federal court overseeing the company’s bankruptcy case.

Other details of the deal weren’t immediately available. According to the company’s Web site, JAS Marketing specializes in buying used equipment from chemical and fertilizer plants and reselling them to other producers.

Farmland officials have said selling the equipment was important because they believed more parties would be interested in buying the 467 acres of real estate if it were cleared of the equipment.

Courts

HealthSouth founder denies fraud charges

Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy was charged with 85 federal counts Tuesday in an alleged $2.7 billion fraud that prosecutors said financed his lavish lifestyle. The charges against Scrushy include false certification of corporate statements, a new offense that makes him the first chief executive accused under the Sarbanes-Oxley law passed last year to target corporate wrongdoers.

Scrushy pleaded innocent and was released on $10 million bond secured by his three homes and 360 acres of plantation property. He faces a maximum possible penalty of 650 years in prison and $36 million in fines. A Jan. 5 trial date was set. The indictment, returned Oct. 29 and released Tuesday, had been sealed amid government claims that his bodyguards had weapons that intimidated witnesses.

Aviation

Southwest cutting call center locations

Southwest Airlines will close three of its nine phone-reservations centers after a decline in call volumes as more customers make plans online.

The low-cost carrier said it would close call centers in Dallas, Salt Lake City and Little Rock, Ark., at the end of February.

The 1,900 employees affected will be allowed to relocate to one of the remaining call centers. The airline did not say how many people it expected will lose their jobs.

Southwest estimated it would cost $20 million to $30 million in the first quarter of 2004 to consolidate its reservations centers and said only that future savings from the closures “may exceed that amount.”

Investigation

Feds to retry banker

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday they would retry Frank Quattrone, the former star investment banker whose first trial on obstruction of justice charges ended in a hung jury.

The disclosure came in a letter from U.S. Atty. James Comey to Richard Owen, the federal judge who oversaw the first trial.

Federal prosecutors and attorneys for Quattrone were scheduled to go before the judge today to discuss where the case stood. But that conference was canceled on Tuesday while the two sides worked out a proposed date for a new trial.

Quattrone’s first trial ended Oct. 24 with jurors unable to reach a verdict.