Kumar and co-defendant Stephen Richards, a former head of worldwide sales at CA, both pleaded guilty to all eight of the counts that they were indicted on two years ago. "I know my conduct was wrong. ... I apologize for my actions," Kumar said at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., according to a Reuters report.

The two executives admitted that prior to and during CA's 2000 fiscal year, they orchestrated an accounting scheme under which the company -- then called Computer Associates International Inc. -- falsely reported hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during quarters in which the deals that generated those revenues had not been finalized.

For example, the indictment charged that Kumar was flown to Paris on CA's corporate jet in early July of 1999 to negotiate and sign a US$32 million software licensing agreement with a customer. The deal was backdated to June 30, and about $19 million in revenue was improperly recognized in the quarter that ended that day, prosecutors said.

The goal of the accounting scheme was to ensure that CA would meet or exceed its revenue and earnings projections in each quarter, they added.

The guilty plea "is unfortunate for Sanjay and CA, but it's another example of the pressures from Wall Street on public companies to make their numbers each quarter," said Steve Rummel, vice president of data services at Maher Terminals Inc., a container terminal operator in Berkeley Heights, N.J., and a former CA customer.