WASHINGTON, Feb 16: Former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay sold $100 million in company stock last year, including a large portion sold back to Enron after an employee warned him about an accounting debacle, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

Lay disclosed the sales in a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, The New York Times said.

They included $20 million of shares sold in the three weeks after Sherron S. Watkins, an Enron official, warned lay that the energy trading giant was in danger of collapsing in a wave of accounting scandals.

The Houston-based company, once America’s seventh-biggest, unraveled last year amid allegations it misled investors about its finances while top executives reaped huge profits by selling their holdings. Enron’s collapse threw thousands out of work and wiped out many workers’ retirement savings.

Lay, who this week refused to testify before Congress, asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, was encouraging Enron employees to buy shares as he was selling, the Times reported. It was not clear how much profit Lay made on his sales.

Lay spokeswoman Kelly Kimberly told the newspaper Lay had remained confident in Enron’s stock through late 2001 and that most of the money he got from Enron was used to pay loans that had been secured by his stake in the company.

She denied the sales were related to developments at Enron or Watkins’ warning.

While most stock sales by corporate executives are required to be reported by the 10th day of the month after the sale, shares sold back to the company do not have to be disclosed until the next year. So most of Lay’s sales were not revealed in the months before his company’s collapse in December in the nation’s biggest-ever corporate bankruptcy.

Lay resigned as chairman and chief executive of Enron on Jan. 23.—Reuters