KANSAS CITY, KAN. — Jurors in the federal fraud trial of two former Westar Energy Inc. executives spent their first full day Thursday reviewing the case but did not reach a verdict.
The panel of 10 women and two men received the case late Wednesday after prosecutors and defense attorneys made their closing arguments 10 weeks after seating the jury.
David Wittig, former chief executive officer for the Topeka-based utility, and Douglas Lake, the company's former chief strategy officer and Wittig's chief lieutenant, face 40 counts each of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and circumventing internal controls.
This is their second trial. Their first ended in mistrial in December after jurors were unable to reach a consensus on more than half the charges.
Prosecutors say the men, who were forced out of Westar in late 2002, engineered extravagant salaries and benefits for themselves at the expense of shareholders, hiding much of their actions from the company's board of directors and federal regulators.
Among their alleged schemes are regularly using company planes for vacations and other private trips, attempting to secure huge financial windfalls from a proposed merger with a New Mexico utility and spinoff of Westar's nonregulated subsidiaries, abusing a program that paid executives for relocating to Topeka and using Westar attorneys to rid the board of directors of their critics.
Defense attorneys this week ridiculed the government's case as misconstruing or ignoring evidence and said prosecutors are seeking to punish Wittig and Lake because they're wealthy.
They claim all the men's actions were legal, approved by the company's directors and disclosed in corporate filings.
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