Qwest

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Ex-Qwest CEO Became BFFs With Drug Offenders in Prison

Paid other inmates to clean his cell with cans of tuna

(Newser) - Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio has emerged from his 54-month prison stint a changed man. The 64-year-old is thinner, healthier, and stronger, thanks to lifting weights and running; he's tanned, shaved his head, and grown a goatee; and his new best friends are a couple of drug offenders named...

Biggest Convention Donors Usually Need Favors
Biggest Convention Donors Usually Need Favors
ANALYSIS

Biggest Convention Donors Usually Need Favors

No limit to funds given to parties' gatherings

(Newser) - Major donors to the Democratic and GOP conventions this year either have business pending with politicians or have recently received a favorable ruling, the Los Angeles Times reports. From cable companies to a government union to an electric utility, millions of dollars have flowed into party coffers—but both sides...

Ex-Qwest CEO's Conviction Overturned

Exclusion of expert testimony nets Nacchio new trial

(Newser) - A federal appeals court overturned Joe Nacchio’s guilty verdict today and ordered a new trial for the ex-Qwest CEO before a different judge, the Denver Post reports. The court ruled that the district judge who presided over Nacchio's trial on insider trading charges erred in excluding testimony from an...

NSA Deepens Tense Alliance with Telecoms

Both sides await word on possible immunity for carriers

(Newser) - The telecom industry will be all ears to proceedings beginning tomorrow on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will decide if companies helping the government’s warrantless surveillance program should receive immunity. President Bush personally lobbied Congress to further the NSA’s tenuous alliance with the industry, whose members are increasingly resistant...

Verizon Gave Up Hundreds of Phone Records

Federal investigators requested, received data without warrants

(Newser) - Verizon gave consumer phone records to the feds without court orders more than 700 times in the past 2 years, the telecom giant has told House investigators. In response to emergency requests, the company also passed along IP addresses, shedding light on the scope of telecom companies' cooperation with federal...

Ex-Qwest CEO Claims Spy Effort Began Before 9/11

Says NSA sought phone records months earlier

(Newser) - Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, claims that the National Security Agency asked his company in February, 2001, to participate in a potentially illegal surveillance program—and when he declined, punished the company by dropping a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, reports the Washington Post. The...

Ex-Qwest CEO Didn't Foresee Trouble Ahead

Nacchio appeals conviction in $52M insider-trading deal

(Newser) - Former Qwest chief Joseph Nacchio yesterday appealed an insider-trading conviction, claiming he couldn’t have known the telecommunications company was in dire straits when he sold $52 million in stock in 2001. Rebutting a federal court’s guilty finding on 19 counts, the brief asserts Nacchio “believed more than...

Top Telecom Exec Takes Over As Qwest CEO

Edward Mueller headed Ameritech, PacBell

(Newser) - A top telecom veteran has been named CEO of struggling Qwest. Edward Mueller, 60-year-old former chief executive of Ameritech and Williams-Sonoma, takes the reins  from Dick Notebaert, who ran the company for five years, the Wall Street Journal  reports. The country's fourth-largest telephone company, Qwest faces increased pressure from competitors...

Ex-Qwest CEO Gets 6 Years
Ex-Qwest CEO Gets 6 Years

Ex-Qwest CEO Gets 6 Years

Nacchio's insider-trading penalty includes paying $71M

(Newser) - Qwest's former CEO was sentenced to 6 years in prison today for engaging in insider trading while the company's stock plummeted. Joseph Nacchio committed "crimes of overarching greed,'' a federal judge in Denver said as he fined him $19 million in addition to the $52 million he must...

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