Lay's wife says couple trying to avoid personal bankruptcy
Associated Press
The wife of former Enron Corp. chairman and chief executive officer Kenneth Lay said the couple is working to avoid personal bankruptcy.
"Everything we had mostly was in Enron stock," Linda Lay told NBC's Today show today.
"We've had long-term investments and those long-term investments have cash calls," she said. "Virtually -- other than the home we live in -- everything we own is for sale."
She said her husband, who built a modest pipeline company into an energy giant, is an "honest, decent, moral human begin who would do absolutely nothing wrong."
Kenneth Lay resigned last week as chairman and chief executive, though he remains on the Enron board.
Linda Lay said the full truth isn't out about the Enron debacle, in which the nation's seventh-largest corporation crumbled into bankruptcy because of questionable accounting practices.
"There's some things (Kenneth Lay) wasn't told," Linda Lay said. "That will all come out in the investigation."
She said outside counsel, law firm Vinson & Elkins, and accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLC had told her husband everything was fine.
Kenneth Lay had no idea former Enron executive J. Clifford Baxter -- who committed suicide -- was in some kind of pain, his wife said.
Baxter was found dead Friday in his Mercedes-Benz, a few miles from his home in suburban Sugar Land. On Saturday, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Baxter killed himself.
"It makes my heart ache, it makes Ken's heart ache," Linda Lay said. "Had we known, we would have picked up phones and called -- we would have gone and been with him."
"If what he did had anything to do with what's been going on, it's a real tragedy," she said.
Enron's collapse is the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Its downfall and accounting practices are being investigated by federal prosecutors, the FBI, securities regulators and 11 congressional committees and subcommittees. |
