Microsoft's Fast charged with 'accounting fraud'
Oslo police raid web firm's HQ
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Norwegian economic crime police have raided the headquarters of Microsoft-owned Fast Search and Transfer and charged the firm with accounting fraud.
Police attorney Baard Thorsen told Reuters that evidence was being sought following allegations that Fast inflated its revenues prior to Microsoft’s $1.2bn buyout of the company in January this year.
"We are raiding Fast's offices now to secure evidence," said Thorsen. "The charge is for accounting fraud."
Microsoft confirmed in a statement that the raid had taken place at the company’s offices in Oslo this morning.
“Microsoft and its subsidiary FAST Search and Transfer is cooperating fully with the police' enquiries,” said the software giant. “We are not in a position to make any further comments at this time.”
Today’s police raid followed a complaint filed by the government Financial Superisory Authority in April.
It claimed that Fast had ignored basic accounting and documentation rules by exaggerating its reported revenue by 250m kroner (US$40m).
"We are conducting the search based on an order from the Oslo district court. We are going through documents and copying servers, and gathering information and evidence," said Thorsen, according to Associated Press.
"There are reasonable grounds for suspicion, and we have to investigate," he said. "This is about manipulating the accounts." ®
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COMMENTS
Re: FASTs rival
Quite a catalogue of FAIL on the part of Autonomy, there, and I don't think you're the only one to have seen this kind of shit going down in the software business or, in fact, in any job where the skilled people are "managed" by people with the intellectual skills and instincts of a primary school bully and the social skills of a chimpanzee on heat: "wanker management" as it was once called in a former workplace of mine.
FASTs rival
I used to work for a rival to FAST. We were told to, in sales presentations to customers, hype up the fact that (a) FAST were being investigated for all fraud and (b) over emphasize how poor their software was, rather than how good ours was. Our managers used to send round snotty emails gloating about our high-profile customers and FAST's unknown ones. Theres a write -up here:
http://www.paullee.com/computers/autonomy.php
Microsoft enterprise search powered by FAST
We'll index you corporate data, we'll check your accounts and flag any fraudulent dealing we'll ...hang on a minute.
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