KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Former Westar Energy Inc. chief executive David Wittig traced outgoing phone calls, hoping to plug a leak of company information to journalists and state regulators, a current Westar executive testified Tuesday.

Bruce Akin, Westar’s vice president of administrative services, said Wittig had the company’s information technology department track outgoing calls. Akin said he then passed that information along to Wittig and Douglas T. Lake, Westar’s former executive vice president and Wittig’s top deputy.

“I did not feel comfortable doing that,” Akin replied under direct questioning from Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Hathaway.

Wittig and Lake face counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, submitting false statements, money laundering, circumventing internal accounting controls and falsifying books and records at Westar.

The trial is expected to last at least 10 weeks. If convicted, both of the executives face more than 10 years in prison. The government also wants to recover $25.5 million in assets from Wittig and $7.5 million from Lake.

Prosecutors on Tuesday continued to focus on efforts to gather information at Westar in 2001. Carl Koupal, the company’s former chief administrative officer, testified Monday about a Wittig-led initiative to stop leaks.

Jurors also heard testimony Tuesday about compensation Westar provided to Wittig and Lake in the form of restricted share units, a kind of incentive that pays dividends like stock, but which are not actually owned by an employee until a specified vestment period.

Using Akin’s testimony, Hathaway suggested that the duo tried to arrange the purchase of Hollywood, Fla.-based Guardian International Inc., which would have resulted in a large personal windfall for both men as they traded restricted share units Westar for shares of the home-security company.

The deal never went though, and the defense pointed out that other members of Westar’s management also would have benefited from the deal.