(FORTUNE Magazine) – The fraud trial of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, currently taking place in New York, boils down to two central questions: What did he know about the company's $11 billion fraud, and when did he know it? In the coming weeks, look for Ebbers's defense team to portray him as clueless. His lawyers say the company's former finance chief--and star prosecution witness--Scott Sullivan cooked the books behind Ebbers's back. But federal prosecutors will argue that Ebbers knew all about the accounting tricks, and they'll undoubtedly remind jurors of Ebbers's reputation as a control freak and his penchant for managing even the smallest expenses. (Former executives say that during WorldCom's decline, Ebbers asked dozens of them to share a single copy of the Wall Street Journal to save money.) Indeed, the image of a hyper-involved manager was one that Ebbers himself cultivated in meetings with reporters and analysts. In an extensive interview with FORTUNE in late 2000--when the fraud was allegedly already underway--Ebbers boasted that he looked at every department's budget every month, and he personally scrutinized each sales rep's performance. "I don't see how people can run a company without knowing what's going on," he said. We'll soon find out just how much he really knew. -- Stephanie N. Mehta