From today's online NY Times:
3 From Software Maker Are Indicted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Three former executives with the software maker AremisSoft Corporation were charged yesterday with insider trading, money laundering and accounting fraud.
A securities fraud indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan accused the company's former co-chief executives, Lycourgos Kyprianou and Roys Poyiadjis, and its former president, M. C. Mathews, of conspiring to bilk shareholders out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr. Kyprianou, 47, and Mr. Poyiadjis, 36, who would each face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, remain free in Cyprus, prosecutors said. Mr. Mathews, who would face up to 10 years, is free in India.
From 1999 through 2001, the three men reportedly inflated the company's stock by fabricating $90 million in fictitious earnings and announcing multimillion-dollar acquisitions of sham software companies. The plan resulted in $250 million in insider-trading profits, which were laundered through offshore bank accounts, court papers said.
Authorities said they had seized about $175 million of the illicit proceeds in bank accounts in the Isle of Man.
AremisSoft, a maker of software and Internet solutions for the manufacturing, hospitality, health care and construction industries, filed earlier this year for bankruptcy protection amid a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and moved its headquarters from New Jersey to Minnesota.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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