WASHINGTON, Feb 6: US President George W. Bush on Tuesday refused to allow the probe into Enron’s scandal-tainted bankruptcy to widen despite outraged lawmakers’ accusations the firm had undue influence in Washington.

“I see a need for laws and I see a need for a full investigation and that’s what we’re providing,” he said, rejecting the idea of naming a special counsel to investigate links between his administration and the failed energy company.

Bush insisted the Enron debacle was a business scandal rather than a political one.

“Listen, this is a business problem and my Justice Department is going to investigate. And if there’s any wrongdoing, we’ll hold them accountable for mistreatment of employees and shareholders,” he said.

However, Senator Ernest Hollings, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said politicians of every stripe all the way up to the White House were tarred with the Enron brush.

“This gentlemen, Mr Lay, bought the government,” Hollings said, referring to former Enron chief executive officer Kenneth Lay and his meetings with vice president Dick Cheney, and the administration’s efforts to help Enron recuperate investments made in India.

An independent prosecutor was necessary, he said, “because (with) this administration’s ties to Enron, they can’t conduct an impartial investigation” adding that the scandal was not just of “corporate corruption, but a culture of political corruption.”

Enron’s filing for Chapter 11 protection on December 2 marked the largest-ever bankruptcy filing by a US corporation, sending shock waves through the nation’s business, financial and accounting sectors.

The collapse has resulted in more than 4,000 workers losing their jobs, and thousands more investors seeing their life-savings crumble into worthless paper.

Both the House and the Senate, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched investigations into the causes of Enron’s collapse, amid allegations of financial misdealings and troubling accounting and legal oversight.

Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to use their subpoena powers to compel Lay — who refused to appear voluntarily before a Senate panel — to explain how top executives walked away from the failed company with millions of dollars.

“I think Mr Lay needs to come before this committee and explain, not to me, but (to those) who lost millions of dollars in hard earned pension monies, to the people of America that trusted him and trusted his corporation,” said Senator Max Cleland.

“It’s an old story, it’s a story of insider theft,” said Representative Billy Tauzin, chair of the US House Energy and Commerce committee, which is also investigating the failed corporation.

“Enron’s senior managers ... essentially sat on both sides of the negotiating table, pocketing millions in fees at the expense of Enron’s shareholders,” he said.

“We have discovered a disturbing pattern of activity that directly contributed to the demise of this company — a web of apparent misrepresentations, half truths, deceit, and self-dealing, in which a significant number of company leaders became entangled,” agreed Representative James Greenwood.

Greenwood heads the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which on Thursday is to hear testimony from Enron’s former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and the firm’s ex-chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.

Fastow has been accused in a damning report by a special committee from Enron’s board of raking in millions of dollars through questionable transactions.

“We found that Fastow — and other Enron employees involved in these partnerships — enriched themselves, in the aggregate, by tens of millions of dollars they should never have received,” report author William Powers told a House panel Tuesday.

“Fastow got at least 30 million dollars, Michael Kopper at least 10 million, (and) two others one million each,” he said in prepared remarks.

A House aide said however, that Fastow and former Enron officer Kopper are likely to invoke their constitutional right not to answer the committee’s questions.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITY: Congressional investigators have uncovered “substantial evidence of illegal activity” by the now-bankrupt Enron Corp. and its management, Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on Wednesday.