CA general counsel to change roles

Computer Associates International Inc.’s veteran general counsel will be changing positions soon, CA said Monday following news reports about the latest shakeup in its executive ranks.

CA’s top in-house lawyer, Steve Woghin, will move to a new job in the company once a successor has been chosen, according to CA spokesman Bob Gordon. Woghin, a 12-year CA employee who has held the general counsel position since 1995, helped guide CA through 2001’s bruising proxy fight with a dissident shareholder and through the accounting violations that led last year to the departure of several of CA’s top financial executives. CA, based in Islandia, New York, remains the target of a federal investigation over those violations, which are also the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the company’s board.

“More than three years of proxy battles and government investigations have left Steve with a desire to focus his talents and experience in other parts of our business,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Kumar wrote Friday in an memo to his executive team, which CA later released.

Details on Woghin’s new position are not yet available, Gordon said.

Long Island newspaper Newsday, which first reported on Woghin’s reshuffling, said the resignation came at the board’s behest, citing “two people familiar with the matter.” CA officials denied Monday that the board asked Woghin to leave the company, but did not specifically refute the charge that he was asked to vacate the general counsel position.

CA said last year that an internal investigation showed the company improperly booked some contract revenue in its 2000 fiscal year, a violation that led the board to request resignations from three senior financial executives. One of those executives, former Senior Vice President of Finance Lloyd Silverstein, pleaded guilty in January to accounting fraud. Investigators for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission say CA falsified dates on 95 contracts in its 2000 fiscal year, and improperly accounted for more than $1 billion in revenue.