Ex-chief takes responsibility for revenue inflation

Computer Associate's former chief executive officer Sanjay Kumar has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, admitting that he led a $2.2bn accounting scandal at the company.

Kumar's former sales executive Stephen Richards too pleaded guilty.

The duo was charged with illegally inflating revenues at the management software vendor over the 2000 and 2001 fiscal years. The company held the financial period open after the end of a fiscal quarter to recognise revenue from contracts that weren't executed at that time. The practice is better known as the '35-day month'.
The company in April 2004 admitted to the practice after an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It led to Kumar's ouster in June 2004 and caused the vendor to pay a $224m fine.

Kumar had previously pleaded "not guilty", but changed his plea after prosecutors found out that the executive had wiped his hard drive clean shortly after the government launched its investigation into the company, thereby disposing the system of any evidence.

Inflating the revenues helped Kumar and fellow executives meet requirements for lucrative bonus packages that were based on CA's stock performance.

The judge has yet to make a ruling on a sentence.

Kumar is also facing a civil lawsuit file from the Securities and Exchange Commission.