This seems to have slipped under the dailykos radar:
Frank P. Quattrone is going back to work. After facing criminal charges for three years, Mr. Quattrone, the former technology banker, walked out of Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday after persuading prosecutors to agree to a deal to dismiss their case, and declared, "I plan to resume my business career."
Quattrone was convicted the second time around (the first trial ended in a hung jury) based on a single email ordering his staff to "clean up those files." This settlement followed an appeal that threw out his conviction in favor of a third trial.
It's worth asking whether Quattrone wrongly charged & convicted. No one can say for sure -- there is always ambiguity surrounding these cases -- but I'm inclined to believe justice was served in this instance and I'll explain why in the extended section.
Quattrone became a symbol, fairly or not, of the consequences of irrational exuberance, the excesses of the dot com boom and bust era.
The LA Times says
Prosecutors felt compelled "to file some case involving high-level corporate criminality, but they weren't ready to proceed on major cases, primarily Enron," said George B. Newhouse Jr., a partner at Thelen Reid & Priest in Los Angeles. "So they grabbed for low-hanging fruit, but the case wasn't there."
Others have not been so lucky: Martha Stewart, Bernard J. Ebbers of WorldCom, L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz of Tyco and Jeffrey K. Skilling and the late Kenneth L. Lay of Enron all were convicted and (with the exception of Lay who brilliantly faked his death) went to prison.
By various accounts, legal experts more or less agree that the evidence against Quattrone was thin. That sounds reasonable to me. He didn't actually write the email saying to clean up those files -- he forwarded it and said he strongly advises bank employees to follow standard procedure which includes regular purging of files. Prosecutors claim he forwarded this message after learning his bank was being investigated.
I don't remember seeing much skepticism reported about the charges two or three years ago. Now that the hoopla's died down it's safe to imply or state outright that overzealousness may be the real culprit here. The times have changed, following that string of high profile convictions -- it seems like the beast has been satisfied for now.
I'm not one to let financial hot shots off lightly -- I'm sure Quattrone has done his share of shady things. Anyone with that kind of moustache must have an alliance of some sort with the dark side. At the very least I think it is fair to give him plenty of credit for the hype that led to the dot com crash. But making an example of someone is not an effective form of justice and I'm glad to see it didn't end in a conviction this time.