HOUSTON — Former Enron CEO Ken Lay sold tens of millions of dollars of Enron stock in 2001 to finance a lavish lifestyle that included a chartered boat for his wife's birthday and holidays on the French Riviera and in Mexico, a prosecutor said yesterday.

In November 2001, when Enron was suffocating from a cash shortage and two weeks before it filed for bankruptcy court protection, Lay canceled Enron's Christmas party, then drew down the final $1 million that was available to him through a company credit line.

Despite the revelations in his trial on charges of criminal conspiracy here, Lay insisted that the vast majority of his stock sales in 2001, which totaled $70 million, were "forced" by banks making margin calls on loans that were secured by Enron stock. Those margin calls were precipitated by Enron's sinking stock price throughout much of 2001.

Under questioning from prosecutor John Hueston, Lay acknowledged that some stock sales, which did not have to be immediately disclosed to the investing public, were used to fund his lifestyle. But Lay maintained that after he regained the CEO title in August 2001, when his co-defendant and former CEO Jeff Skilling resigned, he sold Enron stock only because he had no other liquid assets.

Lay was combative during his fifth day on the witness stand in his fraud and conspiracy trial, accusing a federal prosecutor of highlighting only negative information.

"I didn't have that luxury (of hindsight) when I was right in the middle of battle," Lay protested.

The government has accused Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, of conspiring to hide the true state of Enron's financial condition from the investing public from 1999 to 2001. In particular, Lay is accused of making bullish statements about Enron to investors and employees in the fall of 2001. In September of that year, for example, Lay told employees that Enron's stock was undervalued and that he had recently bought stock.

Prosecutors displayed documents showing that even while Lay was buying $4 million in Enron stock at that time, he was unloading more than $20 million worth of stock through a line-of-credit program at Enron that did not require immediate public disclosure of the sales.

Lay sold his Enron stock to pay down personal debt even though he had access to about $19 million in cash and other stocks that could be sold quickly.