The Emperor of Greed With the help of his bankers, Gary Winnick treated Global Crossing as his personal cash cow--until the company went bankrupt. FORTUNE Monday, June 24, 2002 By Julie Creswell with Nomi Prins Michael Nighan couldn't believe his eyes. As Global Crossing's North America director of regulatory affairs, one of Nighan's tasks was to review all of the startup telco's marketing and sales material. But what confused him in late 1999 was a map of Global Crossing's network that showed a fiber-optic loop around the continent of Africa. "What's this?" asked Nighan. He was told it was Africa One, an undersea broadband cable that Global Crossing planned to build for a group of telecom carriers. "But I said it didn't belong on a map of our network because one, it doesn't exist, and two, even if it did exist, it wouldn't belong to us," says Nighan, who left Global Crossing last November. The response Nighan got was, "Gary wants it there." So it stayed on the map.
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