Prosecutors asked a federal judge to delay a civil case against eight current or former Qwest Communications International Inc. executives until a parallel criminal case against four of them is concluded, according to court filings released on Thursday, Reuters has reported.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Leone said in the filing that letting the civil case -- against four charged criminally and three other former Qwest executives and one current executive -- go forward could jeopardize the criminal case, according to the Reuters piece.
The indictment charged an alleged scheme of falsely recognizing more than $33 million of additional revenue for Qwest in the second quarter of 2001 related to selling Internet services to the Arizona School Facilities Board.
The civil case, filed on the same day by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, involves deals with the Arizona school board plus allegations about inflating revenues from deals with Genuity, an Internet provider. The civil suit said the defendants tried to inflate revenues by about $144 million in 2000 and 2001.
The four, who have pleaded not guilty are Grant Graham, 37, former CFO for Qwest's global business unit, Thomas Hall, 51, a former senior vice president at Qwest, John Walker, 41, a former vice president and Bryan Treadway, 37, a former assistant controller at Qwest. They are scheduled to go on trial in February next year.
