Ex-CA chief gets 12 years

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Sanjay Kumar, the former CEO of Computer Associates, was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday for his role in a $2.2 billion accounting fraud at the software company.

He was also fined $8 million. Kumar is due to report to a federal prison in New Jersey on Feb. 27, pending appeal.

Kumar, 44, pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice in federal court in Brooklyn in April, Reuters reported.

The government said as part of the accounting scheme, Kumar improperly booked software license revenue from 1999 to 2000 in order to meet Wall Street analysts' profit expectations and then lied to investigators about it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Komitee told the judge that Kumar's actions represented "the most brazen and comprehensive obstruction in the modern era of corporate crime," Reuters reported.

Kumar's lawyers reportedly asked for leniency, citing his good works.

CA, previously known as Computer Associates International, restated its results for fiscal years 2001 through 2004 after Kumar left the company in 2004.

In 2004, CA reached an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pay $225 million in compensation to shareholders.

CA (Charts) competes in the corporate software industry with BMC Software (Charts), EMC (Charts) and IBM (Charts).

-- from staff and wire reports