Info for the peeps here on some high-profile resume-lying
incidents.
InterContinental executive walks out after lying on
CV
By Cliff Feltham
Published: 15 June 2007
A top executive of the InterContinental Hotels group was forced to
quit yesterday after lying about his academic qualifications.
Patrick Imbardelli walked out on his £300,000 a year job as head of
the group's Asia Pacific chain only days before he was poised to
join the main board of the FTSE 100 company.
"We treat this as a very serious matter. The fundamental basis of
trust was undermined. He will not receive any compensation," said a
spokesman.
Mr Imbardelli, whose reputation garnished over 25 years in the
hotel industry is now in tatters, had falsely claimed to have three
qualifications - a bachelor of business degree from the University
of Victoria in Australia, and a BSc and a masters of business
administration, both from Cornell University in the United
States.
He had, in fact, attended classes at both establishments in the
1980s but never received any qualifications.
Ironically, it was Mr Imbardelli's successful climb up the
corporate ladder that was his undoing. It appears that the
publicity he received after the group announced on 9 May that he
was to join the main board prompted a whistleblower to alert
InterContinental to look into his background.
An internal investigation quickly established that his CV was full
of holes.
Mr Imbardelli joined the company - then known as Bass - in 2000 as
part of an acquisition, becoming managing director of Asia Pacific
in 2003.
A spokesman said there had been no reason to check the authenticity
of his CV in 2000. "When you buy a company you don't check the
background of the executives you are inheriting. We took it in good
faith," said the group.
Mr Imbardelli, 46, an Australian who is married with two children,
has held a number of top level management jobs with Hilton
International, Hyatt Corporation and Southern Pacific Hotels. Last
month he was named Hotelier of the Year, and was praised by chief
executive Andy Cosslett, who described him as a "driving force in
growing the IHG portfolio".
IHG is the world's largest hotel group with more than 3,700 hotels
in nearly 100 countries. His abrupt departure stunned the hotel
industry. One colleague who worked closely with him in Asia said:
"He is a really great guy. We are all sad and absolutely shocked."
One expert in the headhunting business described a fake
qualification as "like a ticking timebomb waiting to go off - it
can take years to go off but when it does everything is
destroyed".
Mr Imbardelli lived in a luxury house in Singapore which he used as
a base to visit nearly 200 hotels throughout the region.
His job will be filled for the time being by Tony South, senior
vice president for the region.
Bizarrely, Victoria University, impressed by what it considered to
be the outstanding achievements of one of its "old boys", invited
Mr Imbardelli to give an address at a graduation ceremony in 2004,
later describing it as "inspirational".
Brought down by fake qualifications
Jimmy Gulliver
One of the leading Scottish businessmen of his generation and head
of the Argyll drinks group, Mr Gulliver launched an audacious bid
for Distillers, the Scottish whisky group. But Guinness, the
counter-bidders, discovered his claim to have completed an MBA at
Harvard was false and his bid failed.
Neil Taylor
In 2003 he was chosen for the £115,000-a-year job as head of
Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust after claiming a first
class degree from the University of Nottingham. He later produced a
homemade diploma "with a crude copy of the Nottingham University
logo". He was jailed for 12 months.
Ken Lonchar
The chief financial officer for Veritas, a leading storage software
firm, resigned in 2002 after falsely claiming that he had an MBA
from Stanford Business University. Veritas inherited Mr Lonchar
when it acquired OpenVision in 1997. The company said his departure
had no bearing on its financial results.
John Davy
In 2002 he was jailed for eight months in New Zealand for CV fraud.
He had been appointed head of the fledgling Maori Television
Service, claiming an MBA from the Ashland School of Business at
Denver State University, which turned out to be an online racket
delivering diplomas to whoever paid for them.
Source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2659775.ece
