Nortel Show Trial Update: Prosecution witness says Chinese hackers contributed to Nortel downfall

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Computer hacking - not the bursting of the dot-com bubble or a later financial scandal - may have been the driving force behind the spectacular fall of former Canadian tech darling Nortel Networks Corp., a cyber-security expert says.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that hackers from China had breached Nortel's corporate network as far back as 2000, and maintained access to various information for at least 10 years.

That kind of hacking, said David Skillicorn of Queen's University in Ontario, may have been just as responsible, if not more, for the Nortel collapse than the dot-com bubble or the scandal that has landed three former company executives facing trial for fraud.


And in further news, yet another Crown witness does more to prove the defense's position that fraud charges are "preposterous." The Globe and Mail reports:

In earlier questioning by Crown attorney Robert Hubbard, Ms. Sledge said she felt employees were rushed to meet an October deadline to publicly disclose the company’s third-quarter financial results and the broad scope of the restatement. The restatement details were finalized in December, 2003, but Nortel announced two months later that it needed to do a second, broader restatement, which was ultimately unveiled in January, 2005.

Mr. Porter suggested the company was obliged to act quickly on the restatement in 2003 to minimize harm to investors.

“You understand it was potentially harmful to Nortel and its shareholders for quarterly statement for Q3, 2003, to be delayed and not available to the public,” he asked Ms. Sledge.

She replied that she knew it was.

Prediction: In the not-distant future, the defense moves for a summary dismissal of charges based on the prosecution not having established in any way that a crime was committed and to spare the taxpayers more wasted money and court time pursuing charges the prosecutor doesn't appear to understand...and they get a ruling in their favour.