UPDATE 1-Court dismisses fraud charges against 3 Nortel execs
* Former CEO and two others were accused of misrepresenting results
* One-time tech heavyweight crashed after dot-com bubble burst
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TORONTO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - An Ontario Superior Court on Monday dismissed fraud charges against former Nortel Networks Chief Executive Frank Dunn and two other top executives of the failed telecom equipment supplier after a year-long trial involving one of the most spectacular casualties of the 1990's dot-com bubble.
Dunn, along with former Chief Financial Officer Douglas Beatty and former Controller Michael Gollogly, had been accused of misrepresenting Nortel's financial results between 2000 and 2004 in a plan that prosecutors alleged brought them bonus payments while defrauding investors.
The verdict is bound to focus attention on complaints that Canada is soft on corporate crime. It was released more than four years after the executives were first charged. All three had pleaded not guilty.
The crown had charged that the accused improperly manufactured a loss in one quarter and then engineered a profit in a subsequent three-month period in order to trigger lucrative cash and stock bonuses.
(Reporting By Susan Taylor, Allison Martell, and Andrea Hopkins, writing by Cameron French; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Nick Zieminski)