Lay to Testify before Congress

Before hearing from Kenneth Lay, the former Enron CEO, on the 4th, William C. Powers Jr., the dean of the University of Texas Law School who was appointed as the financial supervisor of Enron, insisted that brother and relatives of Lay participated in the management of Enron-affiliated businesses and earned huge profits.

According to the internal report that Powers disclosed on the 2nd, Sharon Lay, sister of Kenneth Lay, and his nephew Mark Lay participated in Enron`s partnership and made enormous profits over 10 million dollars for those years, reported New York Times on the 2nd.

Mark Lay earned 1 million dollars in salary as an executive of Enron for 3 years from 1997, and Sharon Lay also made as much as 10 million dollars from Enron by the partnership between her tour company in Houston and Enron.

Meanwhile, U.S. president George W. Bush announced a part of the revised pension bill and said that he would reform pension rules to protect workers like those who lost their retirement savings when the energy trader collapsed last year.

In his weekly radio address, President Bush announced that △ he will bar executives from selling company stocks during "blackout" periods like the one that kept Enron workers from bailing out while shares plunged, △ he would require that workers receive 30 days notice before the start of blackout periods, and △ he will allow the shares, for which the company charged, to be sold and extend self-controlling after 3 years.

42 million persons in the U.S. have policies in pension programs and the total asset in pension reaches 2 trillion dollars.

The Ministry of Justice ordered all administrative departments along with the White House to save every document of contact with Enron executives.

Ki-Heung Han eligius@donga.com