The long-awaited Wilmington Trust criminal trial is finally underway in a Delaware federal court, as federal prosecutors last week made their case that four of the bank’s former top executives orchestrated a scheme to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans from regulators and investors.

Meanwhile, a group of Delaware’s most high-profile defense lawyers maintain that prosecutors are unable to prove a central charge underlying the case: that former president Robert V.A. Harra, CFO David Gibson, chief credit officer William North and Kevyn N. Rakowski, the bank’s controller, engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements to regulators.