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Former Woolworth’s CIO In Kickback Trial In Australia

Written by Evan Schuman
January 29th, 2010

Former Woolworth’s CIO David Wills is in the middle of a criminal trial, accused of accepting more than $3.7 million in bribes related to IT decisions about a POS system and some server upgrades. The fraud accusations involved approximately $37 million in IT contracts that were awarded by the retail chain.

According to The Australian newspaper, the executive “allegedly received $1.78 million between February 1997 and January 1999 in exchange for awarding an IT contract to Israeli software firm Az-Ben. He is accused of accepting a further $1.92 million from Az-Ben for giving advice to NCR that was likely to influence NCR to enter into a contract with Advance Retail Technology.” The newspaper story added that the “contracts were for Woolworth’s APOS2000 project, an upgrade of its point of sale systems and servers for the Millennium rollover. In December 1997, the retailer began a $130 million overhaul of its systems.”

Posted in IT Strategy/Industry, Payment Systems, Security/Fraud
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