Apple Manager Arrested In Kickback Scheme

pickens writes "A midlevel Apple manager was arrested Friday and accused of accepting more than $1 million in kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories in a federal indictment unsealed and a separate civil suit. Paul Shin Devine, a global supply manager, and Andrew Ang, of Singapore, were named in a 23-count federal grand jury indictment for wire fraud, money laundering and kickbacks. 'Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business,' Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said in a statement. 'We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company.' The alleged scheme used an elaborate chain of US and foreign bank accounts and one front company to receive payments, the indictment said, and code words like 'sample' were used to refer to the payments so that Apple co-workers wouldn't become suspicious."

Comments

highest ethical standards

[Anonymous Coward]

'Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business,' . That's why we manufacture in China.

Re:highest ethical standards

[rotide]

Maybe the _whole reason_ it's cheaper to do so? Because it's basically akin to slave labor? Shit doesn't get made for pennies when you have a well paid and cared for workforce but it's easy to ignore the realities of really, REALLY, sub par working conditions when you get a toy to play with after you dropped some of your disposable income, isn't it?

Re:highest ethical standards

[jcr]

That's why we manufacture in China.

You say that like it's a bad thing. People take factory jobs in China for the same reason that they take any job anywhere else in the world: it beats the alternatives. If Apple pulled out of China, that's a couple hundred thousand people out of work. If the rest of the global electronics industry did likewise, we're talking tens of millions.

Perhaps you should take a moment to google "comparative advantage". Then, maybe you should look into how manufacturing is raising the standard of living in China, just like it did here when we went through the industrial revolution.

-jcr

Re:highest ethical standards

[BasilBrush]

On the wage front, it's fairly orthodox among modern economists to believe that a minimum wage does more harm that good to low income earnings (by making it impossible for many to get a job at all).

That's not the experience in the UK. They introduced a minimum wage in 1999, and increased it every year. For years after, employment went up, not down. None of the claims that businesses would go bankrupt, or stop employing certain categories of workers turned out to be true.

For sure there are problems with unemployment now because of the recession caused by the banking crisis. But that isn't caused by the minimum wage.

If you examine executive pay for public companies, you'll see that companies usually can afford to increase the payroll. It's just that the executives get to decide which part of the payroll to increase, and big surprise, they choose to pay themselves more, rather than increase the wages of the lowest level employees. It takes minimum wage legislation or unions to deal with this problem.

Not with Apple

[jesseck]

We're talking about the organization that got the SWAT team to take back a stolen iPhone... if they can do that, the fines will probably exceed damages. I can't get an school police officer to look at me with a straight face when I tell them my daughter's Hannah Montana Disney MP3 player was taken on the playground.

Re:Not with Apple

[drsmithy]

They are going to use their budget to go after criminals who kill lots of people or do millions in damage first.

The average cop on the street is not involved in operations involving "criminals who kill lots of people or do millions in damage".

back dated options, anyone?

[haystor]

'We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company.'

*cough*
back dated options
*cough*