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A final blow to old pals: Decision to award Wang sole ownership of Islanders cements break with CA's Kumar, who is guilty in fraud(Newsday (Melville, NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 12--The icy relationship between Computer Associates founder Charles Wang and his one-time protege Sanjay Kumar came to a clean break this week in an agreement that leaves Wang the sole owner of the New York Islanders hockey team, according to people familiar with the agreement. Word of the agreement follows by two weeks Kumar's guilty plea to charges of securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice stemming from the federal probe of CA Inc. - a plea that clouded his ownership. This week, according to the sources, the commissioner of the National Hockey League settled Wang and Kumar's standing dispute in an arbitration decision that removes Kumar from ownership of the Islanders, the New York Dragons arena football team, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers minor-league hockey team and certain real estate holdings in Oyster Bay, the sources said. In return, Wang will make annual payments to Kumar of $1 million for the next nine years, the sources said. The agreement also settles a multimillion-dollar loan Wang made to Kumar to pay for a portion of his Islanders' ownership. The loan will be forgiven, the sources said. Wang is also said to have assumed all debt owed on the Islanders. Previously, Kumar held a third of that debt. A spokesman for Wang declined comment, as did Kumar's attorney, Brian Conneely, who said, "I can't comment on it." A call to the NHL wasn't returned. The agreement puts a formal end to a decade-long relationship that was once famously close. Wang nurtured Kumar to run the software company he co-founded. The two men, who entered the country as immigrants and who knew poverty as children, shared in CA's increasing prosperity. They boasted of finishing each other's sentences and were partners in ventures outside of CA. But their association crumbled two years after Wang passed the chief executive reins of the company to Kumar, and he began to put his own stamp on the company. At the same time, federal prosecutors began a probe of CA's accounting practices in 2002. Kumar, who initially pleaded not guilty to a 2005 10-count indictment charging him with securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, last month pleaded guilty to the charges and faces at least 10 years in prison. Wang, who has never been accused of wrongdoing, stopped talking to Kumar shortly after Wang departed as chairman in 2002. He also stopped talking to CA co-founder Russell Artzt, a one-time part owner of the Dragons, who remains at CA and who supported Kumar through most of the federal probes. While there's no specific prohibition on a felon owning a hockey team, Kumar's recent guilty plea may have pushed the two-year dispute to a resolution. The league, for example, assumed ownership of the Buffalo Sabres when members of the Rigas family, the former owners, were arrested in connection with accounting irregularities surrounding cable giant Adelphia. |