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Waksals to pay $5-million to settle ImClone charges

WASHINGTON - Sam Waksal, the imprisoned ImClone Systems Inc. founder at the center of an insider-trading scandal that ensnared Martha Stewart, and his father have agreed to pay about $5-million to resolve civil charges in the case, regulators said Wednesday.

Sam and Jack Waksal neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in the settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sam Waksal pleaded guilty in late 2002 to securities fraud for tipping his daughter, Aliza, to dump ImClone stock just before the Food and Drug Administration publicly announced it was refusing to accept the company's application to market the colon cancer drug Erbitux. He is serving a seven-year, three-month sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania.

Waksal was the first high-profile corporate executive to be convicted and imprisoned in the series of business scandals that began in 2002.

The SEC filed insider-trading charges against Jack Waksal in October 2003, accusing him of having sold more than $8-million of stock based on a tip from his son.

The agency said the settlement with the Waksals, awaiting approval by the federal court in Manhattan, will resolve all of its insider-trading charges against the two. Under the accord, they are paying about $3-million in civil fines and some $2-million in restitution plus interest.

HOUSTON - Enron Corp.'s top leaders will all be tried in Houston on criminal charges connected to the scandal-ridden company's 2001 collapse, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake's decision denies claims from company founder Kenneth Lay, former chief executive officer Jeff Skilling and former top accountant Richard Causey that they couldn't get a fair trial on their home turf.

"Although news coverage about Enron's collapse, this case, and these defendants has been extensive, the court is not persuaded that it has been so inflammatory or pervasive as to create a presumption that there exists a reasonable likelihood that pretrial publicity will prevent a fair trial," Lake wrote in a 24-page opinion.

All three have pleaded innocent. Lake has not scheduled trial dates. Lawyers for the trio had contended widespread media coverage of Enron's collapse made it difficult to find unbiased jurors in the Houston area to hear the case.