I’m not confident that I correctly understand everything in the statement about Ablecom. I’m not totally clear about the relationship. But nothing about this relationship and financial dealings seems unsavory, let alone illegal.
When I worked at Boeing, years ago the company that is now Spirit Aerosystems was Boeing Wichita. In 2005 Boeing sold the facility to an investment firm and it became a separate company and supplier to The Boeing Company of exactly the same products that it produced as a part of The Boeing Company. It was not a legal subsidiary so far as I know. But again, I am not familiar with these business relationships. Given that, Boeing Commercial in Renton Washington would execute purchase orders with Boeing Wichita. And there were agreements about the tooling, most of which “belonged” to Boeing Commercial, but there were tools that “belonged” to Boeing Wichita. Somehow, this all made sense.
There was a lot of analysis and negotiating around what was actually sold to the investment group and what was legally retained by Boeing. I personally was the guy who had the responsibility of identifying what information was subject to negotiation. I did not participate in the negotiations, my job was to identify what the information was and where it was located. For example, virtually all the manufacturing plans and associated engineering drawings were mirrored at a disaster recovery site. There was also on site backup tapes usually retained for 30 days. Every digital transaction had a log entry and so forth. This was the kind of stuff that would most likely be ignored if it weren’t for me and some other IT folks I consulted with. Although in 2005 there was still a lot of hard copy in the form of paper documents on site and at Iron Mountain as well as microfiche/microfilm which also had to be identified.
My point in relating all this is that ostensibly, after Boeing sold the facility, so far as I know not a lot changed with regard to the way Boeing contracted with Spirit Aerosystems. Of course, the accounting changed. What had been Boeing Wichita (BTW, the defense side of Boeing had facilities on the same campus in Wichita, that wasn’t part of the deal.
I don’t know if I have shed any light on this with respect to SuperMicro and Ablecom. Maybe not. To summarize, as best as I can determine based on my experience it doesn’t appear to me that there’s anything untoward about the relationship between the two companies. Maybe @XMFBreakerTinker could chime in with an expert opinion as he’s an attorney.