http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=514&e=10&u=/ap/20030225/ap_on_hi_te/qwest_18 No mention of Saint Phil.....which is good?
It may be too soon to say what will happen to St. Phil. His name could come up when these four guys get raked over the coals. There was alot about all of this on the morning radio talk shows here in Utah and St. Phils name was being mentioned alot. There were alot of callers that lost thousands of dollars with their Qwest stock that want St. Phil to go to jail. Hope not. MLS is more important.
"In addition to the Justice Department and SEC probes, congressional investigators are looking into whether Qwest founder Philip Anschutz had advance knowledge of the company's financial problems before selling $213.5 million in company stock in 2001. " http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=562&e=4&u=/ap/20030225/ap_on_hi_te/qwest
If St. Phil is truly an "inside information" kind of guy, then maybe it's a good sign that he's increasing his involvement in MLS rather than bailing out.
God this makes it tough. I tend to think Anschutz is pretty dirty in all of this, and so I really want him to fry for it. And ultimately, corporate shenanigans like this ARE more important than the immediate success of U.S. soccer. Jeez, we need to get the Ben and Jerry dudes interested in teams or something.
There's a huge difference between Federal charges and some headline grabbing state Attorney General going after you to show the voters he's "on top" of things.
Of course, that is YOUR opinion. Personally, I would care less if he became even a trillionaire due to his shady Qwest dealings, as long as the success of US soccer is not jeopardized. That, of course, is my opinion as I never owned any Qwest shares and therefore my pocket was not affected because of this. _________________________________________
If he was invovled in this, (and though I have no direct knowledge, I tend to think he had to have known something), he deserves what he gets.
i think someone had highlighted a washington post article in the B&M forum that hinted/stated that they were going after anschutz... just building their case as they go
you really think he had knowledge about this? i was watching a show on CNN last night that was talking about companies that have gone through financial mis-dealings and how many of the CEO's are actually included in the inditements when all is said and done...i was amazed to learn that very few CEO's actually are charged b/c a lot of them don't really know what is going on <or they were good enough not to leave a paper trail to themselves> plain and simple; i would bet that saint phil had little or no knowledge of just what was going on, and certainly didn't participate. i think that in the end you will come to find, just like the CEO's of enron and worldcom that in fact phil knew little about what was going in with this revenue scheme...the company will certainly take a hit but i dont see phil going 'down' as well.
If St. Phil is convicted of anything all he'll get is a slap on the wrist. Our federal government really enjoys protecting the rich. If he did have inside knowledge then he should pay the consequences but all he'll have to do is pinky swear that he won't do it again.
I find it hard to believe that anyone could say the success of soccer is more important than corporate greed and thousands of people losing a lot of money. Get a grip. It smells bad. Questions for MLS that it doesn't even want anyone to ask. Can't sweep this under the FieldTurf.
It's worth noting that Anschutz wasn't the CEO of Qwest. While he had a certain "puppet-master" role for a while, it's doubtful that he had any read day-to-day operational dealings during the time in question. There's been a lot of press about this here in Denver obviously, due to Anschutz's presence here and this being Qwest's headquarters. There've been some recent investigative reports in our local papers about the whole Qwest fiasco and they always point out that Anschutz even lost money in cases where a better decision would have created a conflict of interest because of his role at Qwest. He's got his hands in a LOT of ventures outside of Qwest and would hardly be consulted or involved in a plan to "create" $30M or so of revenue deep inside of Qwest. The government definitely looks to be going after some senior managers to get them to testify against even higher targets. But those targets would more likely be the CEO and President at the time of this fiasco... Nacchio and Mohebbi. The guy may not exactly be a saint, and I could be wrong here, but I don't see much splash-back for Anschutz on this.