04/24/2007, 3:40pm, EDT
Tuesday, April 24th
Former Apple CFO points finger at Jobs
Apple's stock took a large hit when word came that Jobs was at least partially involved in 'irregularities' of the company's prior stock options grants. Fears that Apple's chief would lose his foothold as visionary and driving force at the Cupertino-based company sent tremors through its share price as investors acted quickly to avoid a potential stock dropout.
Those fears mostly subsided, however, as Apple's own internal investigation turned up no links to Jobs knowing involvement with the scandal. Industry analysts repeatedly denounced the likelihood that criminal charges would be brought against the executive, but several legal experts stressed that Jobs wasn't "out of the woods" yet.
The San Jose Mercury News yesterday published a report discussing Jobs' likely legal stance in the ongoing investigation, and cited reasons why Apple's head would likely skirt criminal charges.
"When you start thinking about lying, cheating and stealing, there's a mental state that you know what you're doing is wrong," said one former federal prosecutor not involved in the Apple case, according to the report. "If you don't appreciate that, it's very difficult for the government to show that you're a criminal."
Prosecutors would be hard pressed to base a securities fraud case against Jobs on the backdating of his own grant, the report stated, mostly because the grant was approved by Apple's board and not Jobs himself.
"Jobs can take the defense, 'What do I know about the proper accounting for this transaction? I didn't keep a secret from anybody and assumed the accounting would be proper,'" said Stanford law professor and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest. "That would seem to distinguish the Apple situation."
These defense strategies could collapse, however, if Anderson's claim that Jobs knew about the erroneous dates proves true. Further, if Jobs intentionally misled the former CFO by insisting that the grant had been pre-approved by Apple's board -- which Apple already admitted occurred via a fictitious board meeting that never happened -- Jobs could find himself on center stage in the investigation without a solid defense.
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well duh, but it ain't gonna happen. Not over this.
Frankly, I think Jobs knew enough to know that he didn't want to know too much about this at the time. "Plausible deniability" and all.
SJ = neither
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Securities and Exchange said on Tuesday that it won't bring charges against Apple Inc. (AAPL) in connection with allegations of options backdating in 2001, citing in part the company's cooperation in the probe. "Apple's cooperation consisted of, among other things, prompt self-reporting, an independent internal investigation, the sharing of the results of that investigation with the government, and the implementation of new controls designed to prevent the recurrence of fraudulent conduct," the SEC said in a statement.
Now if Nancy comes out and says Jobs pushed her to falsify those documents in November, that's another story. Then again, its another story if we find out Jobs kidnapped the Lindburgh baby, told the Rosenberg's that spying on the US was OK, was up on the grassy knoll in Dallas, and told Michael Richards that using the "N" word during a performance would be funny. So I guess we're stuck with waiting for another shoe to drop.
>>>so just basic hearsay from a former CFO that just paid the SEC 3.5 million in fines; it's no wonder that he would have little love for Steve... errr... their such good friends, go figure
so the SEC witch hunt continues... blah, blah, blah