The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Microtune and two of the Plano, Texas-based technology company's former senior officers with stock options backdating.
The complaint, filed June 30 in the federal district court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that former Microtune chairman and CEO Douglas J. Bartek, with assistance from former CFO and general counsel Nancy Richardson, routinely misrepresented the date on which the company granted stock options to senior executives and other employees.
To conceal the alleged scheme, Bartek directed others to backdate employment records, including offer letters, to establish falsified start dates and grant dates that preceded the actual dates when the new hires began working for Microtune, according to the Justice Department.
Without admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC's complaint, Microtune has agreed to settle the matter by consenting to a permanent injunction against violations of the antifraud, financial reporting, books and records, internal controls and proxy provisions of the federal securities laws. "We are extremely pleased to resolve this matter with the SEC," said Microtune CEO James Fontaine in a statement. The SEC's case against Bartek and Richardson continues, with the SEC seeking financial penalties and other relief under the "clawback" provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which deprives corporate executives of money that they wrongfully earned while their companies were misleading investors.
