Nortel Executives Found Not Guilty On Fraud Charges

Following up on the earlier story about Nortel execs waiting for a ruling in their corporate fraud case, new submitter Unknown1337 writes "Something doesn't add up when a multi-billion dollar corporation loses it's value so quickly, but the courts have decided it wasn't intentional fraud by the executives that caused it."

Comments

Malice

[RenHoek]

"Do not attribute to malice, what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Still, this does not pass the smell test..

Re:Malice

[Mitreya]

"Do not attribute to malice, what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I don't know that someone triggering a $12.8 million bonus payout for themselves can be adequately explained by stupidity. I don't know of a lot of Mr. Bean-like millionaires that just stupidly stumbled into wealth

...accused of participating in a book-cooking scheme designed to trigger $12.8 million in bonuses and stocks for themselves at the once powerful Canadian technology giant.

Re:Malice

[telchine]

I don't know of a lot of Mr. Bean-like millionaires that just stupidly stumbled into wealth

GW Bush comes to mind.

Re:Malice

[Charliemopps]

I don't know of a lot of Mr. Bean-like millionaires that just stupidly stumbled into wealth

GW Bush comes to mind.

Seriously, you still believe this propoganda? His staff has flat out admitted they intentionally tried to make him look dumb and "Country-boyish" to appeal to his core constiuency. The guy graduated from one of the best schools in the country, lead the entire quite well (allthough you may disagree with the direction) and won 2 terms to office in what's considered to be 2 of the toughest elections in modern history. The boy ain't dumb, he was just fake'n.

Re:Malice

[Genda]

I'm gonna do this real fast, so with any luck, we can all put this to bed once and for all. George isn't the worst human being alive. He isn't bright. He's not retarded either. He is a criminal, involved in criminal conspiracies (the majority of evidence points to Dick Cheney as the primary perpetrator in most cases, but George was right there in the thick of it.) George ignored critical warnings on National Security leading directly to 9/11, instead George was setting the record for the longest summer vacation by a President in History, while Dick Cheney and the Bush Cabinet were desperately trying to revive the Star Wars Program from the 80s so Dick could funnel billions of dollars into Halliburton. George was involved in multiple national deceptions leading to a completely pointless and disastrous war in Iraq. He gutted the Bill of Rights, burned down the Geneva Convention, and sequestered innocent Americans to far off countries to be tortured to no particular value for National Security. He knew precisely what Catrina would do to New Orleans (he was in an emergency National Security Council meeting going over the projected impacts of the storm shortly before storm fall.) He let the disaster in New Orleans happen without aid or intervention. To this day, there is no reliable count of the number of people that died in the flood. What is available is that tens of thousands of poor people lost their homes forever and that wealthy property speculators have made billions of dollars snapping up their property at pennies on the dollar. This my friends was a cynical land grab, foisted on the backs of the poor who the government saw as a problem, and this was their solution. The property values of the 7th ward are now dramatically up. I could go on ad nauseum, but it should be absolutely clear that this administration was little more than a criminal syndicate and that we had 8 years of corporate hit men running our nation. The fact the George might or might not be an imbecile seems frankly unimportant in the face of the damage he did. I don't care if he's stupid, I do care that he broke my country, obstructed justice, destroyed two cities, and crashed the economy not once, but twice. George W. Bush is the worst thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War. We will pay for his disasters for at least another generation. Personally I hope he's a genius so he can fully appreciate what a toxic flow of human sewage he and his entire administration were. Oh, and for those who need references, ping me, I have about 4,000, The most amazing thing was that his crimes are so well documented and like the Bankers on Wall Steet, instead of sharing a cell with Bernie Madoff, they walk the streets, free men.

Shows how good they were at creative accounting

[flyingfsck]

That shows how good they were at cooking the books, if malpractise can't be proven. They should open a school for Creative Accounting.

Two Tier Justice system

[FriendlyLurker]

Just another example of the two tiered justice system we now enjoy around the world.

two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system.

Re:Two Tier Justice system

[daem0n1x]

Fortunately we don't live in a Communist system. Remember how in the former Soviet Block the members of the Intelligentsia used to commit crimes with total impunity while the common people had to obey the law and dissidents were convicted based on bogus accusations?

I'm so happy we live in Western Capitalist Democracy where none of those things happen.

Even if not guilty, they lose

[jimicus]

This is one of those cases where the defendant can't possibly win.

If guilty: they dishonestly re-jigged a companies accounts so as to pay themselves a massive bonus. Fraudsters of the highest order.

If not guilty: Not the point. They were in charge of Nortel. If they (totally innocently) re-jigged the accounts thinking it would do the company good, gave themselves a massive bonus as a big pat on the back and then found the company collapsing around their ears, they're still responsible. Only instead of being fraudsters, they're dangerously incompetent.

Where was the coercive plea bargain offer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Download academic articles? Go to prison and be tortured for decades.

Falsify records, ruin a company for your own personal enrichment, and defraud hundreds of thousands of shareholders along the way? No fucking problem.

America is winning a worldwide race to the bottom.

Never work again.

[Rande]

Oh gee, how will they ever survive on the mere millions they've got in the bank? They might have to cut back right down to the bone, where they can no longer afford a new car every month, have to give up 3 of their 5 mistresses, and settle for only a gold swimming pool instead of the platinum one they set their little hearts on.

Nortel: victim of industrial espionage?

[beckett]

Nortel was subject to an organized, sustained industrial espionage effort conducted by Chinese companies. Huawei was specifically named by Brian Shields, Systems Security Advisor for Nortel at the time of the attacks (at the time Huawei supposedly were even copying Nortel's instruction manuals). Shields petitioned Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2004, because even the CEO's computer had been compromised.

the rootkits employed on Nortel hardware were sophisticated enough to survive formatting. it wasn't until recently that Canadian Security and Intelligence Service became interested in the role Huawei had in Nortel's demise

I suggest the story of Nortel's demise has not been fully revealed. Nortel presented with a sudden, public exanguination and it has been a mystery in Canadian IT industry. This is not just another "golden parachutes" story.

Re:In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Fig

[daem0n1x]

And yet,

so many people who were 'against' the occupy movement and everyone still believes in trickle down economics. Really if you think about it. Trickle up makes a lot more sense.

If you succeed in destroying someone's deeply entrenched beliefs using facts and logic, that person won't change his mind but will hate your guts forever.