More Fake News From (and for) IBM, Nobody Ever Held Accountable for Fraud
Earlier this month IBM's shares sank to less than $200 (stock reached $199). The chiefs who lack ethics started pumping things up by lying to the shareholders some more, by paying the media, by making promises that will never be fulfilled, in turn diminishing trust in the "IBM" brand.
As one new example of the "pump" (fake news), consider "IBM Claims New Era of ‘Quantum Advantage’". As the poster put it: "Ignore the 25% loss in market value of the company. Look over here at this shiny bauble."
Soon came the expected comments:
IBM is fast becoming synonymous with lies, fraud, and censorship. No wonder Red Hat goes the way of the dodo, maybe phased out. It's censoring whatever isn't convenient. So much for the "Open Source Way"... as an associate put it, "this has not aged well" [1, 2, 3].
Corruption? Go away, we don't wanna know...
Corruption at IBM? Shut up!
As we noted two days ago, quoting this comment ("and that same HR turns a blind to blatant harassment claims or other really egregious violations. Even when there is indisputable evidence, all of a sudden their systems and protocols seem to stop working."), there's nobody to turn to when the company does illegal things.
This was posted there a few hours ago:
As a US IBMer, I put in two fraud related complaints through the Speak Up Program at IBM because I was certain fraud was happening at the Consulting group in Begaluru run by a certain woman Partner there. Money kept magically disappearing and there was no proper accounting where it was being spent. Everyone there was very quiet or not responding to my questions. No one from the IBM Investigations team contacted me to investigate this either once I reported it. But... eventually (2 months later) someone from HR in Singapore reached out to me for the open cases to tell me that it was a mistake with my Excel program and the cases were being closed. How did they know it was mistake with Excel when there wasn't a problem with the Excel spreadsheet which I submitted ? No answer to that one. There was and is still likely fraud going on in IBM Consulting in India. All the IBM reporting tools go silent or do not work when IBM crooks are involved.
Then this:
I had experienced one as well. I filed a formal complaint backed by extensive direct evidence, and nothing happened—absolutely nothing.I followed up multiple times and was essentially told there was “nothing to see here.” I had dates, times, names, documents, and witnesses that clearly showed what was going on and what had occurred. There was evidence of violations of business conduct, ethics, and other company policies, yet it was all swept under the rug.
Based on my experience, the reporting systems and ethics processes they constantly promote don’t actually work. They give the appearance that employees have a safe way to report misconduct, but when confronted with well-documented evidence, they seem to exist more for show than for meaningful accountability. It’s a fake facade. They had the smoking g-n in their hands and blood on their clothes but investigators just passed on it.
And this wasn’t in some overseas office—this happened in the U.S.
Companies that turn a blind eye to their own corruption end up recruiting more corrupt people and sacking those who object to the corruption. Eventually they blow up completely. █