In a memorandum dated Aug. 30, 2000, for example, Robin Wright, a Global Crossing executive, said that a capacity swap number "ends up being the plug number in order to meet" Wall Street expectations.
The documents also indicate that Winnick knew about fiber-optic capacity swap transactions that helped the company appear to be gaining revenue, deals that in fact had no economic value, investigators say.
Among the S.E.C.'s concerns were how Global Crossing accounted for capacity swaps and the independence of its auditor, Arthur Andersen.
The transactions were so-called "capacity swaps" where companies, in theory, buy space on each other's networks, to cope with demand.
Even before then, the suit said, Mr. Winnick pressured his sales force to conclude capacity swaps that inflated Global's revenue.
The capacity swaps remain one of the chief focuses of separate investigations into Qwest's accounting practices by the justice department and the US financial watchdog, the securities and exchange commission.
Mr. Christensen said that Mr. Winnick's role at Global was largely limited to outside fund-raising and deal making and that the bulk of the company's operations, including highly disputed transactions involving communication capacity "swaps" with other companies, were left to others at Global.
In fact, according to people close to Global Crossing, Mr. Perrone was already known at the company as co-author of a two-page memo dated Feb. 10, 1999, before his hiring, in which he recommended how to best account for capacity swaps.
This figure highlights the importance of accounting for variation of vector competence over the course of time, as the rank of fitness as judged by vectorial capacity swaps from day to day.
Then this week came news that many of these firms have been engaged in deals to swap capacity merely to inflate their reported revenues.
The practice, in which telecommunication companies swap capacity on each other's networks and record the deals as revenue even when no cash changes hands, has come under scrutiny in Washington, where the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how Global Crossing accounted for $100 million of such deals with Qwest Communications International.
