Tech Whistleblower to get $20 Million
By Bala Shah

NetApp, founded in 1992, has 7500 employees who create innovative storage and data management solutions.  NetApp, with revenues of $3.3 billion in 2008, successfully competes with giants like HP, EMC etc which operate in the same vertical.  NetApp India has a number of high profile clients including Reliance. NetApp has just pleaded guilty to overcharging the Government.

NetApp India has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune. NetApp India was in the news last month for offering an innovative scheme which guarantees up to 50 Percent reduction in storage needs for Indian customers that signed on. NetApp guarantees that they would use 50% less storage in their VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft virtual environments with NetApp storage compared to traditional storage arrays.

NetApp India is also ranked in the Hewitt Best Employer list.

footnoted.org reported this week on how NetApp was caught overcharging the US Government for years and had now agreed to pay the American authorities $128 million as settlement. A NetApp employee who blew the whistle on his own company will be entitled to a $20 million reward from the US Government.

The footnoted.org report says:

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NetApp (NTAP) has announced that it had agreed to pay the U.S. government $128 million as part of a settlement agreement over claims that it had overcharged the government. According to the law firm that represented the whistle blower who brought the issue to light, this is the largest corporate fraud settlement involving the Government Services Administration’s Federal Supply Service procurement program so far.

NetApp, formerly known as Network Appliances, first disclosed the issue back in this 10-Q filed a little over two years ago.  And, as we noted in a FootnotedPro post back in early December, the company continued to drip details out in subsequent filings. But it wasn’t until the 10-Q it filed on Dec. 3, that the company disclosed that “could be liable for overcharges in the amount of up to $131.2 million.”

Since that first disclosure in March 2007, NetApp’s stock has fallen nearly 60% — much worse than the general market. And, perhaps more importantly, it was costing them a lot of money in legal fees — $6 million in the last quarter alone.

As for the whistle blower, Igor Kapuscinski, he stands to collect around 15%, or just shy of $20 million.
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