Oracle to Settle Lawsuit with Former Cloud Finance Manager

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Oracle has given notice that it will settle a lawsuit filed by a former employee alleging the company fired her after she threatened to blow the whistle on improper accounting practices.

According to an article on CIO.com, former Oracle Senior Finance Manager for North American SaaS/Cloud Revenue Svetlana Blackburn filed the suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in June 2016 as a whistleblower under the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts.

Blackburn alleged that the company tried to inflate its cloud revenues with accruals not supported by evidence of future billing. When she refused to add the millions of dollars in revenue she considered outside of acceptable accounting practices, Oracle terminated her employment. Blackburn and the company disagreed over her status as a whistleblower, whether she had warned the company of her intention to alert authorities of the alleged improprieties, and even what date in 2015 she was fired on.

Oracle denied almost all of Blackburn’s claims, said she was fired for poor performance, and threatened to counter-sue in August, shortly before settling two related court actions with investors.

Lawyers for both Oracle and the former employee filed for a Thursday case to be cancelled. The sides now have 30 days to finalize and file an agreement, which would then block subsequent action on the dispute by Blackburn.

Oracle announced strong growth in cloud revenue in its latest earnings report in December.

The U.S. Labor Department filed a suit against Oracle alleging discriminatory pay and hiring in January.