The CEO of Microsoft’s enterprise search company Fast Search and Transfer is forced to leave the company due to shady accounting practices.

The Norwegian search engine industry rarely gets boring. In a country that prides itself on its lack of corruption and dubious deals, Fast Search and Transfer has managed to give the ICT industry a scandal of international proportions.

It so happens that Fast Search and Transfer was bought by Microsoft one year ago. At that time The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway (Kreditttilsynet) had already started looking into allegations of Fast having misinformed the market about its earnings.

In October last year Fast was raided by the police (Økokrim — the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime), and even though Kredittilsynet has closed its case on insider trading, the police has not stopped its investigation of “aggressive” bookkeeping.

Photo of John Lervik

In October Microsot CEO Steve Ballmer praised Lervik: “John has a high integrity, as has the company [Fast],” he said at the time.

Microsoft has now gone through the books of Fast. The company has also considered the police investigation and all the bad publicity the story has engendered. The conclusion: CEO John. M Lervik had to leave the company.

The chairman of the Fast board, Keith Dolliver, says to Aftenposten that after having gone through the accounts the company is certain that these practices will never be repeated. “As a conclusion of this process John Lervik has decided to leave his position at Fast,” says Dolliver.

New CEO will be Fast technology boss Bjørn Olstad.

He is 44 years old, and was at one time the youngest professor at NTNU, the university in Trondheim, Norway. He continues to be a professor at the university. Before joining Fast, he was a researcher and research director in Vingmed, a company that was later acquired by General Electrics.

To the Norwegian business site NA24 Lervik says that he has left the company out of concern for his family. He points to the fact that he has had to travel a lot, and that the accountancy processes and the media exposure also have been demanding.

According to Dagens Næringsliv/Dagens IT it has been clear for some time now that Lervik would have to leave the company.

See also: Microsoft will move its main office for enterprise search to Norway.