DENVER (AP) - A civil fraud lawsuit against five former Qwest Communications executives, including one-time chief executive Joe Nacchio, likely won't go to trial until 2009 based on a witness interview schedule released Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig B. Shaffer set a series of deadlines for completing witness depositions and other tasks, concluding with a Jan. 9, 2009, motions deadline. He will set additional deadlines after that date for expert witness depositions and other matters. No trial date has been set.

The scheduling order was handed down one week before Nacchio is scheduled to be sentenced on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million illegal stock transactions in 2001.

Federal regulators and the five defendants have identified 201 people they want to interview about the allegations, which span a four-year period encompassing a multibillion dollar accounting scandal at Qwest.

Of the total, Nacchio listed 82 he alone wants to question, including members of the Qwest board of directors and its audit committee at the time; people associated with classified business Qwest did with the government and customers.

Excluding those, attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the defendants estimated it will take them until Dec. 31, 2008, to complete 117 depositions, which amounts to six interviews per month, Shaffer said.