Business briefs for June 20, 2003

Friday, June 20, 2003 | 11:12 a.m.

SEC accuses execs of fraud

LOS ANGELES -- The founder of Gemstar-TV Guide and his chief aide were charged by federal regulators Thursday with devising a scheme to inflate the company's revenue and boost their own salaries and bonuses.

Henry Yuen, 55, Gemstar's former chairman and chief executive, and Elsie Leung, 57, the company's former chief financial officer, were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a civil lawsuit with securities fraud, lying to their auditors and falsifying Gemstar's books.

Gemstar licenses technology to cable television companies and makers of TV sets and set-top boxes for interactive program guides. It also publishes TV Guide magazine.

Firm settling fraud suit

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sprint Corp., the third-largest U.S. long-distance telephone company, will pay $5.2 million to settle charges it defrauded federal agencies.

The Justice Department said Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kan., agreed to resolve a whistleblower's lawsuit accusing the company of padding fees for connecting customers' calls to local carriers.

The United States in 1998 and 1999 awarded Sprint and WorldCom Inc. a contract for global telecommunications services worth more than $5 billion over eight years, making it one of the largest non-defense contracts ever.

"This is basically a billing dispute," said Steve Lunceford, a spokesman for Sprint. "We believe this is a fair and equitable" resolution.

The company, the main local telecommunications carrier in Las Vegas, didn't admit to wrongdoing as part of its settlement of the False Claims Act suit.