GE Docs–sham internal investigation by GE

My response dated 27 April 2011 on the issue of GE’s alleged investigation into my complaints

I sent the following reply to Mr. Alexander Dimitrief on April 27, 2011. (For Mr. Alex Dimitrief’s letter click here.

Dear Mr. Dimitrief,

Subject: response to your letter dated February 3, 2011 on the issue of your purported investigation

Your letter under reply presents a misleading and deceptive narrative about GE’s alleged investigation.

1. As already pointed out, your letter misrepresents and caricatures my complaints. Your letter misrepresents facts. Your alleged investigation covers-up fraudulent and criminal activity. You caricature my complaint about harassment, retaliation and bullying.

1. Your false and dishonest ‘narrative’ purports to depict what you describe as a comprehensive, thorough, impartial and extensive investigation by a team of investigators including outside counsel from the United States that apparently extensively interviewed me over the course of 5 interviews collectively lasting 10 hours. You painstakingly count and mention 45 emails, 20,000 documents, 20 interviews, 21 separate written complaints, 60-plus pages, etc., etc. .

1. However your entire ‘narrative’ is so full of holes that it is easily exposed as a mala fide misrepresentation. Your investigation was tainted, dishonest, incomplete, biased, and unfair. I had rejected your investigation when it was proposed and continued to reject it thereafter. I find no value or substance in your purported findings which misrepresent my complaints; are based upon complete disregard for facts and evidence; and, which you have arrived at without me being heard.

1. Let me describe Mr. Eglash’s investigative strategy and point out your misrepresentations:

1. Mr. Eglash did not ‘interview’ me over the course of 5 interviews collectively lasting 10 hours. Your assertion to this effect is verifiably and maliciously false. On the contrary, Mr. Eglash went to great lengths and expended considerable effort to ensure that I did not elaborate on my complaints and present my evidence. To a large extent, I was myself not interested in sharing all my information and evidence because I had rejected GE’s internal investigation. Yet, even to the extent I was willing and eager, Mr. Eglash was not interested in hearing me. At the same time, Mr. Eglash attempted to create a deceptive record of me having fully participated in his investigation and of his having fully heard me. Unfortunately, Mr. Eglash was thwarted in this attempt by me.
2. In addition, Mr Eglash’s investigative strategy included subtle attempts to intimidate me, along with attempts to get me to incriminate myself in wrongdoing, He failed on both counts.
3. You suggest that after I accused Mr. Anil Chaddha, the GE Transportation attorney of leaking information to the persons I was complaining about, you immediately and in an accommodation of my wishes assigned Jeff Eglash to take over the investigation. This suggestion is false.
4. Among other things, you omit to mention that Ms. Tara Plimpton suggested (to my amazement) that my concerns be investigated by Ms. Mona Dange, who was the attorney personally involved in the issue I had raised about information discrepancies involving GE’s failed 2009 bid for diesel locomotives.
5. You also omit to mention that after I accused Anil Chaddha of collusion and a cover-up, and after I emailed Mr. Brackett Denniston and the GE Corporate ombudsperson asking for their help and intervention, you terminated my contract, without notice and without assigning any reason, and had security escort me off the premises.
6. Having terminated my contract, and having got rid of me,[1] and having retaliated against me in violation of law and GE policy for raising concerns, you then asked me to participate in an investigation by Jeff Eglash. I expressly refused the offer of such an investigation and made clear that an internal GE investigation at this stage was unacceptable to me and that I would seek my own remedies.[2]
7. You state that Mr. Eglash and Gibson Dunn “continued their investigation” of my concerns “by scheduling telephonic interviews and collecting and reviewing relevant documents”. I note that during this entire period, Mr. Eglash and Gibson Dunn did not actually conduct any interviews.
8. You state that: “In reviewing these documents, GE/ Gibson Dunn found no support for your claims of “cover-ups”, “forgeries”, or “bullying”. With respect, I find this an astonishing statement.
9. In your investigative teams’ no-doubt considerable collective experience of white collar crime and work-place harassment, how often have you found that someone would leave behind documentary evidence of forgery, fraud or harassment? I am surprised that it did not appear to you to be necessary that you conduct interviews and obtain oral evidence. You were surprisingly too willing to be satisfied that no fraud or criminal activity occurred (even in the face of serious charges like forgery and securities fraud) merely because (you claim) you did not find documentary proof.[3] And I must point out that even your claim that you found no documentary proof is in itself false.[4]
10. It is at this point of the story that I once again intervened in the matter by sending an email to Mr. Jeff Immelt on 10 November 2010 objecting to his lobbying for the diesel locomotive tender when I had pointed out that I believed that GE’s tender application contained a forged customer certificate. I asked if GE could confirm to me that the certificate was not forged.
11. GE was unable to confirm in November 2010 that the customer certificate was not forged.
12. I would describe GE’s conduct in pursuing the tender in November 2010 as actionable ‘wilful ignorance’ of a possible forgery. Having satisfied yourself that there was no documentary proof (as you claim), GE decided to ignore the forgery and proceeded to lobby for the tender convinced that I would not dare re-appear. A prudent response to such serious accusation by the Legal Counsel involved in the tender preparation would surely have required more than just a review of documentation. It would surely have required interviewing key witnesses and reviewing the evidence lying with the Government.
13. In your February 3, 2011 letter, you state: “Despite being unable to corroborate your claims, Mr. Eglash organized a team of several GE lawyers and auditors and an attorney from Gibson Dunn to converge in Delhi” to conduct interviews. This statement is also false. It suggests voluntary action by GE, yet as I have described you were compelled to reopen your investigation because of my intervention in November 2010 when I questioned how GE could ignore the forgery issue.
14. After my email to Mr. Immelt on November 10, 2010, you emailed me with the request that I change my mind and meet with Mr. Eglash.
15. I reconsidered the matter and agreed to meet with Jeff Eglash to share what I knew about the customer certificate issue.
16. It turned out that instead of a one-on-one meeting with me, Mr. Eglash intended to interrogate me along with an associate from a law-firm. Not surprisingly I objected to such interrogation and opted out.
17. Nevertheless when Mr. Eglash contacted me on 29 November 2010, I spoke with him on the phone with a GE auditor listening in.[5] I also met Mr. Eglash on 30 November 2010 in the presence of two GE auditors, one being Ms. Shruti Narang.[6]
18. You narrate that: “…over the course of two days, Mr. Eglash, an Indian attorney for GE, and two different GE auditors spent more than seven hours with you going over your concerns.”[7]
19. You give a false impression as if Mr. Eglash went over my concerns with me. You incorrectly state we spoke for seven hours. Mr. Eglash in his email dated 2 December 2010 claimed to have spoken with me for five hours. I disputed his account at that time and clarified for the record that he had not heard me fully and we had not gone over all my concerns or evidence. The total time between the phone conversation on 29 November and the in-person meeting on 30 November was not more than four hours at best. I believe it was less. Phone records can confirm that the conversation on 29 November lasted about one hour. The meeting on 30 November 2010 lasted around 2 and half-hours, certainly not more than three hours in any event. This is based on the total amount of time I was at the venue, as I arrived at 1.30 pm and left the premises around 4.30 pm. On 29 November, I had requested that Mr. Eglash give me 6 hours of his time on 30 November as after speaking with him on the phone, I wanted to go over other issues besides the forged certificate. On 30 November, Mr. Eglash told me he could not spare more than three hours as he had other appointments. I was ready to meet again after his other appointments, but he refused. Out of the three hours that I spent in the business centre of the hotel venue, a substantial amount of time was spent in discussing things apart from the information I wanted to share. By way of example, the first half hour was spent in negotiating whether Mr. Chesley would remain present and the amount of time that Mr. Eglash could spare. I was also asked to leave the room three times for around 10-15 minutes each so that Mr. Eglash could confer with the auditors. I was given no opportunity to relate my experience at GE. Mr. Eglash kept interrupting me, and outright refused to listen to me more than once. Once Mr. Vinod Sharma, a witness arrived, Mr. Eglash abruptly terminated the meeting. During this meeting I made it very clear to Mr. Eglash that he could not in fairness “investigate” this matter without giving me a full hearing and that I would object to any such purported “investigation”. I also informed Mr. Eglash that I intended to initiate legal proceedings to resolve my complaints.
20. It is clear from your letter of February 3, 2011 that you have not heard me or examined my evidence at all. First because Mr. Eglash was not interested in hearing me. And second, you have chosen to ignore even that evidence which I did share with Mr. Eglash, including the evidence that I communicated in writing.
21. Yet your false narrative contains an account of five interviews totalling ten hours. You include in this total a phone conversation with Mr. Eglash on 13 December 2010 that I had requested but which Mr. Eglash restricted to half an hour as he claimed he was busy. [8] Mr. Chesley was on this call as well. Again this was not an interview where I was able to discuss my concerns.[9] I requested that Mr. Eglash travel to India and hear me for as long as it took. He refused. I requested that Mr. Eglash allow me to show him emails and documents from the laptop I had been using at GE. He refused.
22. I sent some further emails to GE in January 2010. On 11 January, 2010, I called Mr. Eglash’s office to speak with him. He was not available. Mr. Eglash replied on email that he would not be available to speak with me throughout the weeks of 11 and 18 January. He asked me to send him a note. On 12 January 2010, Mr. Eglash indicated that he would complete his enquiry by the following week.
23. On 20 January 2011, I made an unscheduled call to Mr. Eglash. Mr. Eglash answered the phone himself and therefore I was able to speak with him. On this call, Mr. Eglash basically informed me that he had finished his enquiry. (This call lasted forty minutes.) I pointed out that Mr. Eglash had not heard me. I repeatedly requested that Mr. Eglash sit with me and listen to me. He refused.

1. As I have already pointed out, your alleged investigation fails to address my complaints and claims against GE and some GE employees, including my concerns about the forged customer certificate, the securities fraud of 2009, and the subsequent conspiracy and conduct that would amount to obstruction of justice. Your letter also caricatures and misrepresents my claims and evidence on harassment, bullying and retaliation.

Sincerely,

Seema Sapra

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[1] No doubt to ensure that I did not gather more evidence or information by still remaining at GE.

[2] At around this time, I was on a call with Mr. Eglash and Mr. Chesley. This was a preliminary introductory call and we did not discuss any of my concerns. I asked that GE tell me why my contract was terminated. I also asked that GE preserve records and hand over copies of my complaints to me. Yet, you refer to this as an interview in your letter when you falsely assert that your investigating team conducted five separate interviews with me totalling ten hours.

[3] Your willingness must have been helped along by your impression that I had disappeared and was not coming back. You probably believed that I would be hesitant to follow-through on the forgery issue out of fear of being incriminated in the matter myself. This seems to have been the larger criminal strategy at work here. I believe the termination of my contract without indicating a reason and having security escort me off the premises was also a strategy to make me hesitant and fearful of raising the forgery issue. The manner in which you terminated my contract is also one reason why I am unable to let this matter rest until the truth is established and exposed.

[4] I have already alluded to the documentary proof that establishes the securities fraud and the subsequent conduct amounting to obstruction of justice. There is to my knowledge documentary evidence that establishes and supports my harassment, bullying and retaliation claims. And the documentary evidence on the forgery matter is in the custody of the Government of India.

[5] On this call, I briefly and hurriedly narrated the events of the weekend of 10 and 11 July 2010. Mr. Eglash was not interested in hearing me and kept interrupting me. At one point he asked me why I was telling him all this. I insisted on giving him a bare outline of the events of this weekend. Mr. Eglash asked me a few other questions. I believe we did not speak for much more than an hour, but call records should easily confirm this. Mr. Eglash requested that I meet him the next day to look at some documents. I agreed. I asked him to bring with him the laptop I was assigned at GE. Mr. Eglash did not bring this laptop to my meeting with him on 30 November. Instead he first claimed that he did not know where my laptop was. He later admitted that it was lying in the custody of Mr. Mrigank Sharma in Gurgaon.

[6] You mention that an Indian attorney for GE was present during this meeting. This is incorrect. The only persons present in the room besides me were Mr. Eglash, Ms. Narang and another GE auditor.

[7] You add: “(Mr. Chesley was present for the in-person interview but, at your insistence, left the room and did not participate.).” On 29 November Mr. Eglash and I had expressly agreed that only a GE auditor would be present along with him for our meeting the next day. Despite this agreement, when I arrived for the meeting on 30 November, Mr. Eglash once again insisted on the presence of Mr. John Chesley. Naturally I insisted that Mr. Eglash stick to what we had agreed.

[8] Mr. Eglash also stated that he was busy for the rest of the week.

[9] My request for further conversation with Mr. Eglash in December 2010 was turned down by him. He indicated he was travelling the week of 13 December 2010 and thereafter he would be on his Christmas break. It was evident that Mr. Eglash was avoiding further conversation with me. Nevertheless, I put down some additional information in writing. I fell ill in the last week of December 2010.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Seema Sapra <seema.sapra@googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 9:10 PM
Subject: misrepresentations in Mr. Alex Dimitrief’s letter dated February 3, 2011
To: "Dimitrief, Alexander (GE, Corporate)" <alexander.dimitrief@ge.com>, "Denniston, Brackett (GE, Corporate)" <brackett.denniston@ge.com>
Cc: Directors@corporate.ge.com, rjs22@cornell.edu, john.krenicki@ge.com, brian.worrell@ge.com, mark.vachon@ge.com, keith.sherin@ge.com, john.samuels@ge.com, michael.neal@ge.com, susan.peters@ge.com, puneet.mahajan@ge.com, shane.fitzsimons@ge.com, pamela.daley@ge.com, beth.comstock@ge.com, charlene.begley@ge.com, mark.begor@ge.com, steve.bolze@ge.com, Jeffrey.Bornstein@ge.com, john.dineen@ge.com, tom.gentile@ge.com, dan.henson@ge.com, jay.ireland@ge.com, daniel.janki@ge.com, david.joyce@ge.com, jamie.miller@ge.com, lorenzo.simonelli@ge.com, dmitri.stockton@ge.com, terri.bresenham@ge.com, john.flannery@ge.com, anish.shah@ge.com, kishore.jayaraman@ge.com, vishal.wanchoo@ge.com, john.rice@ge.com, jeffrey.immelt@ge.com, rita.purohit@ge.com, nancy.anderson@ge.com, rob.mckeel@ge.com, joel.berdine@ge.com, tina.donikowski@ge.com, eric.ducharme@ge.com, marcia.fish@ge.com, tammy.gromacki@ge.com, rich.herold@ge.com, don.itzkoff@ge.com, stephan.koller@ge.com, guilherme.mello@ge.com, monish.patolawala@ge.com, tim.schweikert@ge.com, russell.stokes@ge.com, peter.thomas@ge.com, david.tucker@ge.com, tim.waldee@ge.com, cyrille.petit@ge.com, katy.choo@ge.com, joseph.noga@ge.com, janine.dascenzo@ge.com, carey.greiner@ge.com, jeff.melluci@ge.com, dan.hendy@ge.com, david.wheeler@ge.com, stephen.henderson@ge.com, doug.hensley@ge.com, Janice.baker@ge.com, ross.wright@ge.com, happy.perkins@ge.com, molly.burke@ge.com, kathleen.bardell@ge.com, curtis.doster@ge.com, carol.terry@ge.com, victoria.lazar@ge.com, margaret.morton@ge.com, andi.hayworth@ge.com, jen.riley@ge.com, varun.tejpal@ge.com, amarjyoti.barua@ge.com, david.lobo@ge.com, shweta.singh@ge.com, shruti.narang@ge.com, rajneesh.jaswal@ge.com, chandan.jain@ge.com, mohit.bhatia@ge.com, manish.batra@ge.com, deepak.doegar@ge.com, nitin.garg@ge.com, abhinav.kapoor@ge.com, prakash.chandra@ge.com, sanjay.salhotra@ge.com, "Chesley, John" <JChesley@gibsondunn.com>, "Eglash, Jeffrey C (GE, Corporate)" <jeffrey.eglash@ge.com>, "Warin, F. Joseph" <fwarin@gibsondunn.com>, "Plimpton, Tara (GE Infra, Transportation, US)" <tara.plimpton@ge.com>, james.winget@ge.com, anil.chaddha@ge.com, greg.danilow@weil.com, dplaine@gibsondunn.com, jalee@gibsondunn.com, dburns@gibsondunn.com, ddebold@gibsondunn.com, mdiamant@gibsondunn.com, bbaldrate@gibsondunn.com, pspeicejr@gibsondunn.com, ovretsona@gibsondunn.com, egoergen@gibsondunn.com, jjoseph@gibsondunn.com, jcohen@gibsondunn.com, ldunst@gibsondunn.com, mkirsch@gibsondunn.com, jwalden@gibsondunn.com, asouthwell@gibsondunn.com, lzweifach@gibsondunn.com, awolf@gibsondunn.com, etilton@gibsondunn.com, rblume@gibsondunn.com, jsanderson@gibsondunn.com, lsturges@gibsondunn.com, jpartridge@gibsondunn.com, dwongyang@gibsondunn.com, mfarhang@gibsondunn.com, dfuchs@gibsondunn.com, mmcrae@gibsondunn.com, nhanna@gibsondunn.com, wchan@gibsondunn.com, pdoris@gibsondunn.com, cfalconer@gibsondunn.com, procher@gibsondunn.com, bdavidson@gibsondunn.com, bfleury@gibsondunn.com, bgrinspan@gibsondunn.com, jrobe@gibsondunn.com, aobadia-zerbib@gibsondunn.com, bschwarz@gibsondunn.com, mwalther@gibsondunn.com, mzimmer@gibsondunn.com, kaustin@gibsondunn.com, owelch@gibsondunn.com

Mr. Brackett Denniston,

I attach scanned copies of some documents as evidence that statements made by Mr. Alex Dimitrief in his letter to me dated February 3, 2011 are false.

Contrary to statements in Mr. Dimitrief’s letter, I was employed as Legal Counsel to support GE Transportation in India on contract for an eleven month period.

My job responsibility extended to the full role played by Legal Counsel in GE. The attached documents support my position unambiguously. (In addition as I pointed out earlier, the internal website of the GE Transportation legal team had a pdf organizational chart with pictures and names of the attorneys in Ms. Tara Plimpton’s team. (Ms. Tara Plimpton was the General Counsel for GE Transportation during my time at GE). When I joined GE in April 2010 there was a place on that chart for the India Legal Counsel. In August 2010, I downloaded that chart and my name was printed on that chart as the Legal Counsel for India for GE Transportation.

Further contrary to statements in Mr. Dimitrief’s letter, my contract was terminated by GE in violation of whistle-blowers laws and GE internal policies after I accused Mr. Anil Chaddha of collusion and a cover-up and after I elevated my compliance concerns by emailing Mr. Brackett Denniston and the GE Corporate ombudsperson asking for their help and intervention. I received replies from Mr. Denniston, Mr,. Dimitrief and Mr. Mark Nordstorm. Yet my contract was thereafter terminated abruptly without notice and without assigning any reason.

The termination letter states that my contract was terminated under Clause 11(b) (ii) of the contract. This clause required that GE give me a thirty days written notice and also provide reasons for the termination. No such notice or reasons were provided. I point out that the termination letter does not invoke Clause 11(b) (iv) of the Contract. The Contract did not permit immediate unilateral termination by GE without assigning any reason unless there was a violation of articles 8B and 8C of the Contract by the Consultant (in this case me). The termination of my Contract by GE was therefore also in violation of the termination provisions in the Contract.

I was confronted on September 20, 2010 by Mr. Arvind Subramanian, the HR manager for GE Transportation in India who was accompanied by Ms. Geetanjali Shivdasani (HR representative from GE Corporate-India who I presume was representing Mr. David Lobo, the HR head for GE India). I was handed over the termination letter which I refused to accept. I was then asked to hand over all equipment and GE property and leave. The HR personnel felt it necessary to have security escort me off the premises even though I complied with their requests.

I left the GE premises. went home and sent an email to Mr. Brackett Denniston and others (this email is extracted below). In this email I recorded what Mr. Arvind Subramanian told me on September 20, 2010 when I asked him who took the decision to terminate my contract. His answer was that this decision was taken on a conference call between Ms. Tara Plimpton, Mr. Deepak Adlakha, Mr. David Lobo, Mr. Arvind Subramanian, Mr. Pratyush (Prat) Kumar and Mr. Anil Chaddha. I also recall being told that this conference call took place on September 19, 2010, a day before I was informed of the termination of my contract.

The termination letter dated September 20 2010 was sent to me by courier after September 20, 2010 (as I refused to accept it when it was handed over to me on September 20, 2010 by Mr. Arvind Subramanian in the presence of Ms. Geetanjali Shivdasani) along with enclosed cheques.

Seema Sapra

email sent on September 20, 2010

From: Seema Sapra [mailto:seema.sapra@googlemail.com]
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 7:50 AM
To: Plimpton, Tara (GE Transportation, US); Adlakha, Deepak (GE India); Denniston, Brackett (GE, Corporate)
Cc: Lobo, David (GE India)
Subject: termination of my contract

All,

I was sorry to learn today that GE had decided to terminate my contract. This amounts to retaliation against me for making a harassment complaint and raising compliance concerns and for speaking the truth.

What does GE intend to do about my complaints? I would like a copy of all emails(received and sent) on my concerns because I intend to go to Court.

My complaint about a fraud regarding the reason for GE losing the D Loco bid in 2009 is a potential shareholder fraud and a SEC violation. I intend following up on this. Your response in terminating my contract is in violation of US whistleblower protection laws.

Please provide me with a copy of all my emails in the "concerns" outlook folder and my word documents in the "concerns" file folder on the laptop I was using. These are records of the complaints I made and I am entitled to retain a copy.

I have also requested that my emails and documents be preserved.

I was informed by Arvind that the decision on terminating my contract was jointly taken by Tara, Deepak, David, Prat, Arvind and Anil Chadha. I am surprised how people I have complained against could be a party to this decision.

I would also request that everyone who I worked with or interacted with regarding my concerns be asked to preserve their email records as evidence.

Regards,

Seema
–
Seema Sapra

Attachments:

GE Contract dated April 23, 2010

GE termination letter dated September 20, 2010

GE Agreement dated April 30, 2010