Prosecution Rests Case In Quattrone Retrial

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

27 April 2004

The prosecution in the retrial of former CSFB star banker, Frank Quattrone rested its case on Friday, following five days of testimony from 13 government witnesses.

The banker stands accused of forwarding and endorsing an e-mail in December 2000, suggesting that CSFB employees 'clean up' their files in the face of an SEC investigation into the stock allocation process during 'hot' initial public offerings (IPOs) in the late 1990s.

According to reports, prior to concluding, federal prosecutors read sections of testimony from Mr Quattrone's first trial, in which he initially announced that he did not play any part in deciding the allocation of stocks in popular initial public offerings (IPOs), and then revealed under cross examination that he did in fact have influence in that area.

A mistrial was declared in October 2003 after the jury hearing the initial case against Mr Quattrone announced that it was hopelessly deadlocked.

According to one of the jurors interviewed after the mistrial ruling, six out of the eleven jurors had been in favor of acquittal on all three charges until fairly late in the deliberation process, when several jurors apparently changed their mind and decided to vote for a conviction on two of the counts, leaving just two in favour of acquittal - these two said that they were concerned by the paucity of evidence against the accused.

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