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Senate panel to subpoena Lay
By Sridhar Krishnaswami
WASHINGTON, FEB. 5. The Senate Commerce Committee has voted unanimously to subpoena the former Chairman of the Enron Corporation, Kenneth Lay. The subpoena which is to be followed by another one from a different Congressional panel comes a day after Mr. Lay's attorney said that his client will not appear before law-makers on Capitol Hill.
No specific date has been set for Mr. Lay's testimony before Congress. The former CEO of Enron _ who has since resigned from the Board of Directors of the company _ is not expected to answer questions in any substantive fashion. Mr. Lay is expected to ``take'' the Fifth Amendment, the constitutional right against self-incrimination.
``I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that he doesn't testify and invokes his right under the Fifth Amendment'', Democratic Senator, John Breaux, said. Law-makers want to quiz Mr. Lay on the collapse of Enron which filed for the largest bankruptcy in American history in December last. The accounting firm of Arthur Andersen has been accused of shredding Enron documents.
There is very little yet on any official wrongdoing of the Bush administration. But the goings on at Houston have raised the level of political rhetoric, the Democrats trying to cash in on some perceived advantage. Enron and the Bush administration had participated in a ``cash and carry'' relationship, the Democratic Senator, Ernest Hollings, said.
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