Jurors sent seven notes during the first three hours of deliberation in the case against Frank Quattrone.
By Associated Press
Published May 1, 2004
NEW YORK - Jurors began deliberating Friday in the retrial of Frank Quattrone, a star investment banker during the Internet bubble who is accused of obstructing justice by sending an e-mail encouraging colleagues to destroy files.
The jury was sent home for the weekend after deliberating for about three hours. Earlier in the day, they heard closing arguments that presented dramatically different accounts of the intent behind the banker's message.
A prosecutor said Quattrone purposely told colleagues to destroy files so he could protect his personal fortune from a federal investigation that threatened him.
Quattrone's lawyer said the government had built a flimsy case suggesting his client had turned an e-mail that amounted to a "22-word little bureaucratic snippet" into a "lucky crime that makes no sense."
Jurors sent seven notes in their first three hours of deliberations, including one asking whether they could consider the absence of other charges against Quattrone as circumstantial evidence in their decision.
They also asked for dozens of e-mails to and from Quattrone that were introduced at the trial, including a binder of his e-mails from the three days before he sent the document-destruction note at the heart of the case.
The 48-year-old former banker is charged for sending an e-mail Dec. 5, 2000, that encouraged his subordinates at CSFB to "clean up" their files by destroying some documents from past deals.
At the time, federal regulators and a grand jury were investigating whether the bank had accepted illegal kickbacks from clients in exchange for shares of hot initial public offerings of stock.
Prosecutor David Anders laid out a series of e-mails showing that Quattrone was repeatedly warned of a federal investigation into the IPO allocation process.
He reminded jurors that Quattrone made $120-million at CSFB in 2000 as head of the Global Technology Group of investment bankers, a fortune the prosecutor described Quattrone as bent on protecting.
"He knew about the ongoing investigation, and he told his employees to destroy documents anyway," Anders said. "He did it to obstruct justice, and he did it to protect his lucrative business and livelihood."
For Quattrone, the prosecutor said, "The real message here was: Throw away documents. There are lawsuits on the way. Throw things away."
Quattrone's lawyer, John Keker, displayed for jurors a giant projection-screen image of a red herring, insisting the government was misleading the jury about the true facts of the case.
He said Quattrone believed all along that the pending federal investigation concerned whether hedge funds had improperly received IPO allocations - a separate function from Quattrone's banking division.
