Free Tangled Webs by James B. Stewart Page A

himself and wasn’t even in the office that day. “Starting at the beginning of the day, I received a phone call from my assistant [Doug Faneuil] in the morning, and . . . he had received a phone call from Alan Goldberg, the accountant of the Waksal family, and the nature of the phone call was, as described by my assistant, that we were to expect additional phone calls from members of the Waksal family, most importantly, Aliza Waksal had an intention to sell all the shares in her account, and Sam Waksal would like to transfer shares from his account to her account. . . . I was on holiday in Florida . . . at a borrowed apartment in Miami Beach, where I had been staying.
    “At that point I asked [Doug], I wanted to make sure that’s what he was saying. And I said, ‘I would like to speak to Alan Goldberg myself to understand exactly what this is about.’ . . . I believe I spoke with Alan Goldberg that morning . . . to just confirm what he had said. And that was that . . . Doug had only been in my employ about six months, and I was away, and this was a large transaction, and [I] also wanted to make sure that he knew what to do in such a case. . . .
    “I must have spoken once or twice with Doug about other matters. At some point, on one of those phone calls, I said, ‘I would like to call Martha Stewart, and I would like to apprise her of the price of the stock, please.’”
    “Do you remember what the stock was trading at, at that point?”
    “I believe the stock was approximately $60 a share, or something close to it. Slightly above or slightly below. And I don’t recall whether I placed the call from my cell phone or, once again, Doug and I placed the call together. And we did not reach her, so we simply left a message with her assistant, who explained to us that she was in transit.”
    “When you were calling her, did you call her at home? At work?”
    “We only call the office.”
    “Do you know who you spoke with?”
    “Yes. Annie, who has been her assistant for several years, and with whom we speak all the time . . .”
    “And what was the message?”
    “The message was to please call us back, and also to please advise her that ImClone stock was at whatever the price was at that time.”
    “ ‘Please call us back’?”
    “Yes . . .”
    “And you specifically told Annie that ImClone stock was dropping?”
    “No. We just gave her the price of the stock.”
    “Okay, I’m sorry . . .”
    “Then I get another call from Doug, and this call came in after lunch. And that call was that Martha had returned the phone call from an airport, that she was in transit, and he had given her the price of the stock. And, based on the price of the stock, she elected to sell her shares, her remaining shares, in ImClone Systems from her account, her personal account.”
    “So Martha called Doug.”
    “Correct.”
    “You did not speak with her?”
    “I did not speak with her that day.”
    Helene Glotzer interrupted.
    “When you called Annie, can you just try and think, to be as specific as possible, when you asked her to ask Ms. Stewart to please call you back, did you say, ‘It’s urgent, call me back immediately’? Something like that?”
    “No. I said, ‘I would like to speak with her, if possible today, regarding ImClone and what the current price of the stock is.’ Understanding that she was in transit and that she sometimes is very, very difficult to reach.”
    By way of further explanation, Bacanovic described in detail an earlier phone conversation he had had with Stewart on December 20. “We reviewed each and every position in the account. And we discussed the fundamentals of all the positions. We discussed the overall status of the portfolio, and included in that discussion was ImClone. And so we reviewed ImClone and discussed what her intentions were for ImClone at that time versus my recommendations. . . . And she wanted to hold the stock. And I challenged that by saying, ‘The stock has been