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| courtesy: www.wired.com |
According to InformationWeek.com, Apple has admitted to backdating certain option grants, including two awarded to Jobs, in order to "take advantage of more favorable exercise prices for those grants".
One estimate says that this backdating gave Jobs a potential net gain of more than US$20 million had he exercised his options.
Although not illegal under US law if disclosed, an internal investigation cleared the Jobs in the initial investigation, but the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has now filed another lawsuit against Apple's former general counsel Nancy Heinen, for allegedly "covering up the backdating", the report notes.
According to the InformationWeek report, some $7 billion worth of shareholder value was chopped from Apple's stock in the two weeks after the June 29 2006 disclosure that the company had discovered this past backdating issue.
The SEC says it is "seeking injunctive relief, disgorgement, and money penalties against Heinen, in addition to an order barring her from serving as an officer or director of a public company". At the time of publication, the charges against Heinen remain pending.
