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Oracle's Ellison Withheld E-Mails in Suit, Judge Says (Update2)
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| Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison deliberately destroyed or
| withheld e-mails and failed to preserve tape recordings that should have been
| turned over to lawyers for shareholders suing him, a judge ruled.
|
| U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said yesterday that the
| e-mails, as well as recordings of interviews for a book about Oracle founder
| Ellison called ``Softwar,'' were willfully withheld. Ellison and Oracle knew
| the material was potentially relevant to claims that they made false
| statements about the company's 2001 second-quarter financial results and
| problems with a software product, Illston said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a9OHBiyXHVPQ&refer=us
They must be cooking the books. Novell and Microsoft paid whistleblowers to
vanish. The judge found the evidence satisfactory.
For corruption-free software, c/f Free software. Oracle is overhyped.
Red Hat’s Spacewalk floats over to PostgreSQL
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| Of course database migrations are a complex and costly project to undertake,
| so the addition of PostgreSQL support could also provide an interesting
| insight into what it takes to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL. All the
| nitty gritty details are available here.
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http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/09/02/red-hats-spacewalk-floats-over-to-postgresql/
Related:
Unauthorized biography of Steve Ballmer turns up little new
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| A lengthy anecdote about accounting irregularities exposed by whistleblower
| Charles Pancerzewski concludes weakly, "Microsoft paid over $4 million to
| make Pancerzewski go away, an amount that presumably wouldn't be paid out
| without the Office of the President, the trio to which Ballmer belonged,
| signing off on it."
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/86841_ballmer13.shtml
Microsoft's Accounting Under Scrutiny
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| The company has still not made enough information public to provide analysts
| with detailed information on the profitability of its MSN Internet business,
| Mr. Galvin said, adding, ''There's still room for them to obfuscate.''
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E1DC173DF932A35754C0A96F958260
Microsoft - Undeserving of Libertarian Praise
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| One strategy that Microsoft has employed in the past is paying for the
| silence of people and companies. Charles Pancerzewski, formerly Microsoft's
| chief auditor, became aware of Microsoft's practice of carrying earnings from
| one accounting period into another, known as "managing earnings". This
| practice smoothes reported revenue streams, increases share value, and
| misleads employees and shareholders. In addition to being unethical, it's
| also illegal under U.S. Securities Law and violates Generally Accepted
| Accounting Practices (Fink). Mr. Pancerzewski claims he was forced to retire,
| for raising the issue of deferred earnings with Microsoft executives, thereby
| making plausible deniability more difficult for said executives. He has since
| sued Microsoft, who responded by settling out of court, but also sealing the
| records to prevent public disclosure (Fink).
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http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/20/11034/3908
Microsoft Agrees To Refrain From Accounting Violations in SEC Settlement
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| Microsoft has agreed to refrain from accounting violations to settle federal
| regulators' allegations that it misrepresented its financial performance, the
| government announced Monday.
|
| Under a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the software
| giant neither admitted to nor denied wrongdoing. No fine was imposed.
|
| The SEC alleged that Microsoft's accounting practices from July 1994 through
| June 1998 caused its income to be substantially misstated.
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http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18819490
"Microsoft Tax," MSN Enters the Black Hole, New Names for NT
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| The lawsuit, filed last year by Mukilteo City Councilman Charles
| Pancerzewski, alleges that he was forced to resign as Microsoft's general
| auditor in January 1996 after working for the company's internal auditing
| department for more than four years. The suit claims that a "significantly
| younger man" with little auditing experience was picked to replace
| Pancerzewski, who was finally forced out because he discovered Microsoft
| might have been violating government regulations. Once Pancerzewski left the
| company he was replaced by the younger man, who his attorneys believe
| was "less prone to raise issues of possible legal improprieties which could
| threaten or embarrass Microsoft or its management.
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http://www.msboycott.com/news/98_06_22.shtml
SEC Investigating Microsoft Practices -- Earnings Manipulated, Former Employee
Contends
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| "The CFO to whom Charlie was reporting his concerns about illegality was the
| biggest advocate for the very illegality that was going on," Vial argued in
| court a year ago.
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http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19990701&slug=2969514
Microfraud?
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| THE ALLEGATIONS WERE shocking: For years, Microsoft has systematically
| distorted its profit figures in an effort to consistently beat Wall Street
| expectations and keep its stock price steadily rising. The false reports
| would violate SEC regulations, and amount to outright fraud.
|
| More shocking was the source of the allegations: Microsoft's chief of
| internal audits, Charlie Pancerzewski, who reported directly to the company's
| chief financial officer.
|
| Most shocking of all was what happened to Pancerzewski when he reported the
| suspicious bookkeeping to his supervisors, Microsoft CFO Mike Brown and chief
| operating officer Bob Herbold, in the spring of 1995. Soon afterward,
| Pancerzewski—who for nearly five years had received stellar performance
| evaluations—received his first-ever unsatisfactory one, and was eventually
| forced to resign.
|
| Two months ago, Microsoft quietly settled a lawsuit containing these
| allegations, filed in 1997 by Pancerzewski under the Whistleblowers
| Protection Act. The auditor claimed he was wrongfully terminated after
| telling his supervisors that Microsoft might be breaking securities and tax
| laws. The lawsuit made its tortuous way through several rounds of pretrial
| motions until last fall, when US District Judge Carolyn Dimmick denied
| Microsoft's final plea for summary judgment, finding credible evidence that
| Microsoft may have violated SEC rules, as Pancerzewski alleged. Shortly
| thereafter, Microsoft and Pancerzewski settled out of court. Terms of the
| agreement were sealed, but one source who claims familiarity with the case
| says that Microsoft paid Pancerzewski $4 million.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20070308032343rn_2/www.seattleweekly.com/1999-01-06/news/microfraud.php
Novell fraud lawsuit settled for $13.9M.
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| After more than seven years in the courts, Novell will spend $13.9 million to
| make a securities fraud class-action lawsuit go away.
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http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0198-225344/Novell-fraud-lawsuit-settled-for.html
Intel's anti-trust memos started vanishing from the top
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| Chairman Craig Barrett, CEO Paul Otellini and sales chief Sean Maloney
| have appeared on a list of Intel employees thought to have deleted
| e-mails possibly relevant to AMD's anti-trust lawsuit against its
| larger rival. The missing e-mails have thrust a livid state of mind
| onto AMD's lawyers who have very serious problems with Intel's
| rather lax document retention policy.
|
| [...]
|
| CEO Otellini appears to have been one of these troublesome employees.
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/11/intel_tortellini_episode/
AMD: Intel Destroyed Evidence in Antitrust Case
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| In an unpublished statement to the U.S. District Court of Delaware,
| AMD alleges Intel allowed the destruction of evidence in pending
| antitrust litigation.
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http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6352
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