KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Jurors began deliberating Wednesday in the federal fraud trial of two former Westar Energy Inc. executives charged with looting the Topeka-based utility.

Former chief executive officer David Wittig and former chief strategy officer Douglas Lake face 40 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, circumventing internal controls and money laundering while running the largest electric company in Kansas.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys wrapped up nine weeks of testimony and arguments earlier Wednesday, presenting radically different motivations for the men’s actions before being forced out of Westar in late 2002.

Their first trial ended in a mistrial in December after jurors said they were unable to reach agreement on more than half of the charges.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Hathaway has accused the two of enriching themselves at the expense of the company and its shareholders. He said the men used corporate airplanes for vacations and other personal trips, pushed the company to invest in businesses in which they had an interest, abused a program intended to pay executives for their homes when they relocated to Topeka, sped up a bonus for Wittig and used company attorneys to push out directors critical of their compensation.

His main argument is that Wittig and Lake orchestrated a scheme to gather together Westar’s nonregulated businesses and, as part of a merger with a New Mexico utility, spin them off to a separate company they would run. They would then leave the debt with the utility and its ratepayers. Regulators eventually nixed the deal.