Motorola Ex-CFO Drama Continues

Today, Motorola's former CFO, Paul Liska, formally denied the allegations that he ran a data scrubber on his company-issued laptop to destroy evidence. Meanwhile, Motorola calls the whole thing an "extortion campaign."Extortion is a strong word, but that's the term Motorola has given to Paul Liska's attempt to wring $37 million from the company in a wrongful termination suit.

Mr. Liska's response is classic. He calls Motorola's allegations a "lawyer-concocted fairy tale of jealousy and revenge."

With allegations of misconduct on both sides, exactly what happened between Liska and Motorola feels fuzzy at best.

The timeline goes something like this. On February 3, Motorola announced that Liska was being removed from the CFO post, and went so far as to praise his work. At some point, Mr. Liska took his company laptop off of Motorola property. When it was returned, there was "nothing on it."

Reversing its earlier praise, Motorola later claimed that Liska was fired for cause. He filed a retaliatory discharge lawsuit, claiming that he was fired after questioning some financial strategies the company was employing with respect to forecasting sales in its handset division.

Today's statements were made in Illinois court, where the drama will continue to be played out, painful blow by painful blow.