Apple fires ‘doctored docs’ lawyer
p2pnet.net News:- It seems Steve Jobs has fired the lawyer who drew up the papers which landed him in the doctored documents scandal.
“Jobs’ biographers say evidence indicates that he’s a pescetarian,” says Justin Scheck in The Recorder. “He went to India. He takes only $1 a year in salary. And he leaves it up to other people to award him hugely valuable piles of stock in Apple Computer, where he’s the CEO. People like Wendy Howell, the former in-house Apple lawyer responsible for option paperwork, probably won’t be attending Jobs’ eagerly awaited MacWorld speech Tuesday.
She filled out the paperwork on a 2001 option award to Jobs which was, “artificially pumped up via a set of fabricated meeting minutes” and in December, “became the lone person to lose her job as a result of the company’s well-publicized options problems”.
She may be gone, but she won’t be forgotten because, “As the person who wrote out those ‘minutes,’ Howell has become a central figure in the Apple probe – both as a potential defendant in a fraud case and as someone who could tell the government who at the company knew about backdating and its financial and legal implications,” says says The Recorder.
A 2002 Apple filing said the options were given to Jobs in October 2001, says a recent The Financial Times story. “However,” it goes on, “the purported board authorisation was dated near the end of the year, suggesting that the benefits were both not properly authorised and were backdated. Mr Jobs later surrendered his options before they were exercised, implying that he did not gain any direct benefit from them. He was later given a grant of restricted stock by the company instead.”
When it was suggested the doctored docs could mean the SEC would de-list Apple, Who’d be served ? – The Associated Press and Bloomberg had Jahan Raissi, a partner in a lw firm which represents companies in SEC matters, asking.
“If it was Joe’s Shlock and Poultry Farm, then sure, get them out of there,” he answers.
“But not Apple.”
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
doctored documents – Jobs in forged records scandal, December 28, 2006
The Recorder – Apple Quietly Canned Lawyer Who Backdated, January 8, 2007
The Financial Times – Apple ‘falsified’ files on Jobs’ options, December 28, 2006
The Associated Press and Bloomberg – Apple shares swoon on reported options probe, December 28, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
January 8th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
“…doctored docs could mean the SEC would de-list Apple…”
“If it was Joe’s Shlock and Poultry Farm, then sure, get them out of there,” he answers.
“But not Apple.”
So if a BIG company does unethical illegal stuff, it’s okay.