Scoop! - Simply-info.co.uk

Scoop!
Exclusive News and Investigations
from the Simply Info News Team
article edited 30th June 2005 to remove the name of the Bombardier employee used by the writer of the message. Simply-info wish to make it clear that there is no reason to believe there is any truth in the message or that the writer of it was an employee of Bombardier.
Bombardier inc.
A deliberate attack?

The following message appeared on a Canadian investment bulletin board on the afternoon of Saturday 12^th May:

I don't know if this makes me an angry investor or an angry employee ( I guess both since I own stock ) but I have a problem.
I work at Bombardier / Learjet's Flight Test Centre in Wichita in a QA related role. Without boring you with details, my main job is to X-ray parts for verification of integrity. Well, we have been both cutting costs and trying to speed up work. The pressure has been building for quite a while until my Supervisor came up with a fix 2 monts ago.
Long story short we are faking tests, documentation, even serial numbers and have been since February. It started out an occasional thing that we were going to do just to get caught up, but it has turned into a constant thing now, and I am worried.
I'm getting scared that a part is going to fail or we get caught ( I think this may be illegal ), so I have decided to just go public. At least this ends it.

The message was removed shortly afterwards, although the owner of the Web Site has confirmed that it was not removed by him, and it has proved impossible to contact the person with whose name the message was signed. That person has subsequently contacted Simply-Info and has denied both writing the message and that there is any truth whatsoever in any of it.

Bombardier inc. is a Canadian company whose products and services include the Learjet aircraft. They employ 37,000 staff in 23 countries. Turnover for the group for the first quarter of this year was $4 billion, an increase of 23% on the same period last year.

According to figures published 24^th May 2001, they have a backlog of orders amounting to $32.6 billion which has increased from a backlog of £28.3 billion on 30^th April 2000.

Bombardier seem unconcerned over the allegations. An e-mail to Mike Fahey (mike.fahey@learjet.com) Vice President International Sales, at their Wichita offices went unanswered. In a telephone call to their Corporate Office in Montreal, a Simply Info reporter was told that no officers of the company were available for comment, but that such allegations were commonplace, had no basis of truth, and could be ignored.

** Deliberate attempts to damage a company’s share price by spreading false rumours ("de-ramping") are not uncommon. In the UK this year, a man was arrested by Kent police as a result of an investigation by the fraud squad and computer crime unit into a forged announcement concerning the Irish company Minmet plc, that appeared on the investment bulletin board Interactive Investor International.

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25th May 2001