The unraveling of the worlds of former Westar Energy bosses David Wittig and Douglas Lake didn’t get the big media play of other corporate corruption scandals. But there was nothing small about the punishments they drew Monday for their campaign of conspiracy and fraud: 18 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for Wittig and Lake, besides millions of dollars in fines and restitution. Prison and poverty will be quite a well-deserved change for these two. As the Topeka-based utility continues to rebuild trust after the Wittig debacle, which left it $3 billion in debt, the case’s dramatic finale should deliver a powerful message of deterrence to would-be corporate thieves and their board overseers.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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21 Comments
Now lets send them to a REAL prison; not some Club Fed. I hear there are real good ones down in Texas.
I agree Ben.It would be nice if the corporate executives would be concerned for the welfare of their clients/consumers instead of the welfare of their personal pocketbook.
Dear David:Adios. Sayanora. Good bye. See ya. Auf Widersein, etc.
gmbtm
Dear David,
If you drop the soap in the shower, you might want to kick it back to your cell.
Wittig and Lake should share a cell.
All their electricity should be powered by an exercycle.
“Dammit Doug pedal faster! I’m trying to read here!”
If you noticed, Wittig and Lake were not initially brought down by the Kansas or U.S. justice system. Not a peep from two successive Kansas Attorney Generals.
The drumbeat was started and carried on by Weststar shareholders, employees and interested observors, on Weststar Communication’s stock message board, for several years. Looks like using message boards and blogs will be a powerful future tool for the general public to blow the whistle on greedy corporate and political big-wigs.
Ok folks, it’s not nice to take pleasure in the downfall of these gentlemen.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
They’ll soon have company after Delay, and Ken Lay get convicted. Time to clean house. I bet the Righteous Right is disappointed to hear Tom Delay won’t be running for re-election. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/pl_nm/delay_dc_1
Steve, check this one out:http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1179857,00.html
What are you KIDDING Steve?
De Lay was an albatross for them. Happy as I am that De Lay is finished in politics, the whole right wing is even happier.
THINGS I LIKE THE SOUND OF
Inamates Wittig and Lake
Inmates Lay and Skilling
Inmates Libby and Rove
Inmates Cheney and bush
I remember how he smirked all the way through his trial.
How’s the smirking working now, Big Guy?
Hey, where are all the right-wingers to tell us about the glorious self-correcting “free” market?
C’mon, not one convoluted and crazy theory about how he was dethroned by jealous neo-socialists?
How soon they run from their cracked idols.
They broke the law.
Free Markets have rules and regulations. If you don’t respect them and break them, then off to prison you go. It’s so funny that socialist use “Free Markets” as an example of bad behaviour.
There was nothing that Wittig did that was considered “Free Markets”
What a poor augument Freestarter. You won’t find anybody that thinks that Wittig and Lake was an example. The only people who loved them was the government of Topeka. They were the darlings of that town.
But you won’t find a respectable business person that would ever come close to finding them as an idol.
*The Great Defender of the Truth*That’s Me. :)
Enron, Adelphia, Arthur Anderson, MCI, Halliburton . . . there all just “bad apples.”
The system is not bad, it’s just a few people who are bad.
And if workers work harder and harder and make less and less, well, that’s just their own damn fault for not being clever.
And they get to go to Club Fed instead of a real prison.
True, Ben, but it is prison.
True madder, but if we had equal justice as implied by Joe these guys would languish in a place like Attica.
A common “punishment” for companies or executives that participate in securities fraud is a “cease and desist order” that prohibits them from violating securities laws in the future.
Does this make sense to anyone?? The SEC slaps them on the wrist and tells them they can’t do anything that isn’t already illegal??
Until we see real punishment for these types of crimes, we’ll continue to see violations.
with a 300-pound cellmate named Bubba
Note to newspaper reporters: Its known that some passengers who flew on the Westar jet plane as guests of Wittig and Lake, et al, had no business purpose for being on the plane. This of course was at the expense of Kansas electricity rate-payers and Westar stock holders. The list of these people should now be public information and published as soon as possible.
We also need to see more information about the Westar Board of Directors who allowed Wittig and Lake to put Westar into the precarious debt position it is now in.
Does anyone have a bio on Wittig? I seem to remember him from Coastal Corp., or ANR.