MARTHA--Panel: Martha to Turn Over Documents
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Martha Stewart will on Tuesday turn over documents demanded by a congressional committee probing her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. shares just before the company publicly disclosed bad news, a spokesman for the panel said on Monday.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee had threatened to subpoena the documents if not produced, which include her e-mail and telephone records from December and January, to try to clear up questions about what she knew, if anything, about ImClone's problems.
"Martha Stewart's attorneys have assured us that they will turn over all the documents the committee has requested by the close of business tomorrow," said panel spokesman Ken Johnson. "We will review those documents thoroughly before deciding how to proceed."
The panel will likely take a couple weeks to go through the various documents turned over. "I suspect it will be early September before Chairman [Rep. Billy] Tauzin decides if a subpoena of Ms. Stewart is necessary," he told Reuters.
Stewart, the style guru who is head of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is being investigated for possible insider trading for selling almost 4,000 shares of ImClone before the company announced regulators had refused to review its cancer drug, Erbitux.
Questions have arisen about whether she was tipped about those problems. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that her stock broker's assistant called Stewart to warn her that ImClone's then Chief Executive Officer Samuel Waksal was selling his shares.
Stewart, whose empire includes marketing tips on cooking, crafts and home decorating, has denied wrongdoing.
Her lawyers told the committee in June that the shares were sold under the pre-existing arrangement to sell the stock if it fell below $60 a share and she ordered the sale after a call from her broker at Merrill Lynch & Co. |
