Swindling at Oracle
September 3rd, 2008Via: Bloomberg:
Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp.’s chief executive officer, 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 tapes and recordings of interviews for a book about 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.
“The court believes it is appropriate to infer that the e-mails and the Softwar-related materials would demonstrate Ellison’s knowledge of, among other things, problems with the Suite 11i, the effects of the economy on Oracle’s business and problems with defendant’s forecasting models,” Illston said.
As a penalty, Illston said the jury in the case will be instructed to assume that Ellison knew about the problems. Illston also said she would take that assumption into account when deciding whether to rule in favor of investors on their claims and Oracle’s requests to throw the case out. The trial is scheduled to begin March 30.
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Investors claim that Redwood City, California-based Oracle, the world’s second-largest software company, improperly booked millions in sales in 2001 and that Ellison knew about the problems and sold $900 million company stock before they were disclosed to investors.
Ellison settled a similar investor lawsuit in 2005 by agreeing to donate $100 million to charities and pay $22 million in attorney fees.
Related: Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets
FWIW, I work, on and off, with a guy who used to be an Oracle employee, and who worked directly with Larry Ellison on occasion. He told me that, basically, all the bad stuff you hear about Ellison is true. Not like we should be surprised, viz. the recent discussion about what it takes to get to the top of our industrialized world.
After skating away with another cool billion overpricing his N IPO, he is going to sail away free again.
But you should feel sorry for him because he is an orphan just like Steve Jobs. And both are just extremely wealthy.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:N
Maybe time to listen to JFK again…
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=12827