“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs was questioned by government investigators leading the U.S. probe into backdated stock options grants at the company, lawyers familiar with the matter said,” Karen Gullo and Connie Guglielmo report for Bloomberg.
Gullo and Guglielmo report, “Jobs met with officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department last week in San Francisco, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the interviews are confidential. Apple said last month an internal review found ‘no misconduct’ by Jobs or current management.”
“The meeting, which took place the same week Apple announced record sales of its best-selling iPod music player, shows the U.S. government is still seeking information about Jobs’s role in the backdating even after the company’s report clearing him and others, said Nell Minow, editor at the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm in Portland, Maine,” Gullo and Guglielmo report. ‘It is after all the SEC’s view on his culpability that matters, not the internal investigation at Apple,’ Minow said.”
“The people wouldn’t disclose specifics about what Jobs was asked, what he told investigators and whether there would be additional meetings,” Gullo and Guglielmo report. “Mark Pomerantz, an attorney for Jobs, declined to comment. Luke Macaulay, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, whose office is investigating Apple, declined to comment, as did SEC spokesman John Nester in Washington.”
More details in the full article here.
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What? No pithy comments from MDN? Is it too hard to spin this one in a positive light?
Here’s a go at the MDN Take:
Sources tell MDN that Steve Jobs in a confidential interview with SEC officials revealed that Santa Claus drafted the documents, and that the Easter Bunny signed them, and that the Tooth Fairy filed them.
We find this completely believable, because Apple under Steve’s leadership is the best company on the planet and Microsoft sucks, especially the Zune.
We are glad that Steve has cleared up this misunderstanding, and are sure that this is the last we will hear of the option scandal at Apple.
To the comment that “Steve Jobs should be treated like anyone else”… you are quite naive. You need to think about people and systems.
Like Martha Stewart, Steve Jobs will NOT be treated like anyone else. He is a scalp that will absolutely make the career of any prosecutor who can bring him down.
And federal law is extraordinarily broad and vague. In reality, the law is quite dependent on prosecutors having discretion and limited resources. But those go out the window with a high value target like SJ.
My sad prediction is (1) better than 50% chance of an indictment; (2) signifcantly smaller chance of a conviction.
The hopeful news is the prosecutor who resigned… one doesn’t think he’d stay if he could put SJ’s scalp on his shelf.
Personally, I think SJ, like all of us, is guilty of not being perfect. But there’s a lot of subjectivity in law (“intent” makes a big deal). And there’s sooooo much incentive to a prosecutor to get this public a target.
And the public–which this is all being played to–doesn’t even know that backdating was legal… and is comparing Apple to Enron.
People, if Apple was Enron, they would have recorded selling 21M iPods, with 16M of them merely in inventory at Apple stores (but some officer at Apple would own 2% of Apple Stores, Inc so it counted as a sale to an independent entity). And they’d be booking profits on the iPhone by “marking to market” the value of their intellectual property involved… NOW… months before even shipping the thing.
And if I’m a prosecutor and I indict SJ and fail to convict, I’m still a lot more famous and better off than if I treated it “like any other case”, realized I’d lose, and moved on.
The wealthy and low-profile had advantages in this system… they have plenty of legal firepower and it is easier for a prosecutor to move on. But high profile targets are at a disadvantage… and NO ONE has the resources of the federal government.
I decline to comment on this article.
“And the public–which this is all being played to–doesn’t even know that backdating was legal… “
There is nothing legal in what Apple did.
“if Apple was Enron, they would have recorded selling 21M iPods, with 16M of them merely in inventory at Apple stores “
Or they would have recorded paying themselves a few million when they really paid themselves 20 million. Hey, wait a minute, That’s what Steve did…