Motorola ex-CFO Paul Liska claims Motorola fudged financial reports

Motorola’s future is looking bleaker and bleaker by the day. The recently launched Motorola QA4 Evoke might signal something of a shift in design philosophy at Motorola, but there’s no denying that the once-giant mobile phone maker is dying a slow death. And, as another affront to Motorola’s credibility, former Motorola CFO Paul Liska is now claiming that Motorola lied about its financial performance and that he was fired for bringing the fiscal shenanigans to light.

The recently released legal complaint was filed in a Cook County Circuit Court on February. According to the filing, Motorola’s Mobile Devices Business executives “were, intentionally or recklessly, materially misstating its 2009 forecasts and strategic plan.” Liska claims that internal financial forecasts submitted to Motorola’s Board of Directors were “”based on inaccurate or unsupportable financial assumptions.”

In fact, the filing fingers Motorola co-CEO’s Sanjay Jha and Greg Brown as having actively “ignored important facts known to both [Jha and co-CEO Greg Brown].” The problem here is that Motorola has been charged with covering up information that, had it been made public, would have caused the “continued deterioration of Motorola’s credit and, when shown to be unsupportable and/or misleading, to the possible ruin of the entire company.”

Liska’s court filing also alleges that his position as Chief Financial Officer was terminated in order to sweep his allegations under the rug. Liska charges that Motorola’s move to fire him “violated mandated policy that favors full disclosure, truthfulness and accuracy in financial reports,” noting that he has yet to receive his severance from Motorola. The former Moto CFO goes on to allege that Motorola’s lawyers worked to cook up a false story that was intended to “destroy his reputation in retaliation for raising legitimate concerns.”

For its part, Motorola responded to the court filing in a statement to the Chicago Tribune, saying that Paul Liska was a “treacherous officer” who connived to “scheme designed to portray himself as a whistleblower and demand millions in return for his silence.”

[Via: BusinessWeek]