Frank Quattrone helped finance and launch the likes of Netscape and Amazon.com, but was later convicted of obstructing justice and witness tampering.
The belated acquittal of charges of document destruction against former Big Five accounting firm Arthur Andersen has given lawyers for Silicon Valley financier Frank Quattrone a new chance to get their client off on appeals.
Mr. Quattrone encouraged Credit Suisse First Boston staffers to clean out extraneous files at a time when his firm was being investigated. His defense has been that a longstanding document retention policy had been in place, and he was merely helping staff remember to follow the policy. He claims he had no way of knowing which documents investigators wanted when doing this.
CSFB handled some of the hottest IPOs of the dot-com boom. Its distribution of those IPOs was called into question, resulting in the investigation. Mr. Quattrone emailed staffers with instructions to dispose of documents, a move the government successfully argued was aimed at eliminating evidence.
But the Andersen reversal, which hinged on the instructions given by a trial judge to a jury, held that the former accounting firm’s employees did not act in a knowing and dishonest fashion when deleting documents. The original jury was only asked to consider whether Andersen’s actions were intended to impede investigators, which it so concluded.
Those instructions on interpreting the law proved to be too broad on appeal, and the Andersen verdict was reversed. Mr. Quattrone’s legal team hopes to convince an appellate judge today that the defendant also did not know with certainty which documents were wanted by investigators.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
