Topeka ? Federal prosecutors say they won’t challenge a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ordered former Westar Energy chief David Wittig be resentenced after it set aside his five-year prison sentence in a loan case.

His sentence in April was for a 2003 conviction of concealing from bank regulators a $1.5 million loan he made to former Capital City Bank President Clinton Odell Weidner II in 2001.

Meanwhile, Wittig is awaiting a decision from the Denver-based appeals court on his challenge of his 2005 conviction of looting Westar of millions of dollars. He is serving 18 years in that case and remains in custody.

Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas, confirmed Friday the government won’t challenge the ruling, but he declined to elaborate on why that decision was made.

Last month, the 10th Circuit in a 3-0 ruling said the maximum sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines is six months, and that U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson didn’t “explain what dramatic facts justified such an extreme divergence” from the guidelines.

The guidelines aren’t mandatory, but judges are required to justify departing from them. The court ordered Robinson, of Topeka, to impose a new, unspecified sentence. No hearing date for resentencing has been set, her office said.

Prosecutors said Wittig and Weidner conspired to hide the loan, which Weidner used to invest in a residential development in Scottsdale, Ariz. Weidner pleaded guilty to two of six counts against him and was sentenced to five years. He later claimed he was pressured by his attorney to make the plea, but the 10th Circuit recently refused to revisit the guilty pleas.