update California Attorney General Bill Lockyer may file criminal charges within a week in its investigation of tactics used by Hewlett-Packard in an inquiry into boardroom leaks, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
"It could happen in a week," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer, the state's top cop. However, Dresslar said, "We're not going to confine ourselves to a specific timeline for any charges."
Lockyer said in a televised interview Tuesday that his office has enough evidence to file charges against HP officials and outside contractors.
"We currently have sufficient evidence to indict people both within HP as well as contractors on the outside," Lockyer said in an interview aired Tuesday on the Public Broadcasting Service's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
"Crimes have been committed," Lockyer said. "People's identities being taken falsely is a crime. People gaining access to computer records that have personal information, in California, that's a crime."
HP last week said private investigators working on its behalf used false pretenses to obtain private phone records of board directors and journalists to track down the source of leaks dating back to at least 2005.
The corporate intrigue has already led to a shakeup in the HP boardroom. Earlier on Tuesday, the company announced that Patricia Dunn, who initiated the investigation, would step down as chairman in January, and that George Keyworth, the board member pegged to the leaks, was resigning immediately.
