Clockwise from top to bottom, former Nortel CEO Frank Dunn, CFO Douglas Beatty, and Controller Michael Gollogly
All three will be sentenced tomorrow, Monday, in Toronto, in one of Canada’s largest criminal fraud cases.
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READ MORE: Culture of Arrogance Felled Nortel
UPDATE: Charges against all three are dismissed
Justice Frank Marrocco said he was not satisfied that the three accused had improperly accounted for accrued liability balances to misrepresent Nortel’s 2002 financial results, nor had they improperly fudged income statements in the first-quarter of 2003 in order to earn a bonus. “The accused are presumed innocent. The burden is on the prosecution. It was entirely appropriate that we go through this process to find out what happened. The burden, in my view, is not met. The charges are dismissed,” he said.
The verdict is bound to focus attention on complaints that Canada is soft on corporate crime. It was released more than four years after the executives were first charged. All three had pleaded not guilty.
ORIGINAL POST
In light of the failure to criminally prosecute Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers, the sentencing of these three Nortel executives tomorrow, may send a message that Canada is prepared to do the right thing and apply stiff criminal penalties in such cases. All three have already paid large fines, but have also insisted that they are “not guilty” of criminal fraud. The Court Justice who will hand down the sentences tomorrow, presided as prosecutor over the largest previous case of corporate fraud in Canadian history. Observers are hopeful that Canada will treat this situation much differently than in the Dick Fuld case.
I thought the earlier post meant my former bosses had been convicted and was surprised to learn they weren’t sentenced as predicted here but acquitted.
After four years of waiting, the outcome was indeed a litmus test of the Canadian judicial system’s soft handling of corporate law breaking. IMHO