HARTFORD, Connecticut (Bloomberg) - Lawyers picked a jury of nine women and three men for the fraud trial of former insurance executives accused of helping American International Group Inc. inflate reserves by $500 million.

Jurors will hear opening arguments on January 7, when four former executives from General Reinsurance Corp. and one from AIG go on trial in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut.

The defendants are General Re's former CEO Ronald Ferguson, 65; ex-chief financial officer Elizabeth Monrad, 53; Christopher Garand, 60, ex-senior vice-president of finite reinsurance; Robert Graham, 59, ex-assistant general counsel; and Christian Milton, 60, ex-head of reinsurance at AIG.

General Re is a unit of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Its CEO, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is on the government's witness list. He denies any knowledge of improper accounting. Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the former CEO of AIG, the world's largest insurer, was named by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator, defense lawyers say. He also denies any wrongdoing.

The jury includes an investment broker for an insurance company and an operations manager for another insurer. Another juror is a software company sales executive whose son is a lawyer at a firm that represents AIG. The panel also includes a retired sheet metal worker and a retired human resources manager.

The case centers on contracts initiated after analysts criticized AIG's reduction of loss reserves in the third quarter of 2000. New York-based AIG paid a $5 million fee to Stamford, Connecticut-based General Re for the deal, prosecutors say. They say the companies agreed AIG would incur no losses, even though the contract made it appear AIG could lose $100 million.

AIG later reversed the transactions and agreed in February 2006 to pay $1.64 billion to settle probes of accounting and sales practices by then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

The defendants face conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud and false-statements charges.

Two former General Re executives, John Houldsworth, 48, and Richard Napier, 56, pleaded guilty and are expected to testify as government witnesses.