Quattrone Seeks Freedom Pending Appeal
Former Silicon Valley star investment banker Frank Quattrone asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to let him stay out of prison while he appeals his conviction on obstruction-of-justice charges.
Quattrone, 48, has been ordered to report to prison Oct. 28 to begin serving an 18-month sentence. He was convicted in May of hindering a federal investigation into stock allocation.
In a filing with the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, lawyers for Quattrone said federal prosecutors had no objection to allowing him to stay out of prison pending appeal.
Only U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, who oversaw the case, insisted on sending him to prison in late October, the lawyers said. The court papers also referred to media mentions of the judge’s “hostility toward the defense.”
Owen handed down the stiff sentence in early September after finding Quattrone lied during testimony at his trial. The judge denied a request that the former banker be allowed to remain free pending his appeal and ordered him to surrender in 50 days.
“If bail pending appeal is appropriate in any case, it is appropriate in this one,” Quattrone’s lawyers wrote in papers to the appeals court.
Quattrone, who made $120 million in 2000 as the head of technology investment bankers at Credit Suisse First Boston, was convicted of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
The case hinged on a Dec. 5, 2000, e-mail in which Quattrone endorsed a colleague’s suggestion that bankers “clean up those files.” At the time, the government was investigating how CSFB allocated shares of stock offerings.
Quattrone is widely credited with being among the first to see the coming technology boom of the 1990s, working on initial public offerings for companies such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Netscape Communications Inc.
