Opinion ID: 789756
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Mr. Sabzali's performance review

Text: 185 The government urged a number of related inferences from the evidence of Mr. Sabzali's performance review and promotion — mainly, that the Defendant was aware of and approved of Mr. Sabzali's sales to Cuba, wanted to reward him for those sales, and wanted such sales to continue as evidenced by the fact that, despite being promoted to a marketing position, Mr. Sabzali was to continue handling the Caribbean sales. The defense pointed to testimony in the government's case tending to undercut the reasonableness of such inferences — mainly, that Don Brodie, not the Defendant, was in charge of North American affairs, thus making it more reasonable to infer that Don alone was responsible for Mr. Sabzali's promotion, and that Mr. Opperman was promoted by the Defendant to an international position, thus making it unreasonable to infer that the Defendant had a hand in a North American-related promotion like Mr. Sabzali's. In ruling on the motion for acquittal, the District Court acknowledged that a rational juror could conclude that the reference to Caribbean in the performance review meant Cuba, and that the Defendant read the performance review, saw the reference and knew therefrom that The Bro-Tech Corporation was selling product to Cuba. 268 F.Supp.2d at 419. However, the District Court rejected any inference that the Defendant also knew, as a result, that the U.S. entity (as opposed to solely the U.K. entity) was actually involved in those sales. See id. 186 We agree that the evidence related to Mr. Sabzali's performance review would support the inferences identified by the District Court, but believe there are additional ones that might be drawn by a rational jury from the evidence as a whole. Specifically, we believe a jury could reasonably infer that the Defendant not only read the performance review, but approved of the underlying promotion, knew it was based on Mr. Sabzali's success in transacting business with Cuba, and intended to reward and thereby incentivize such sales in the future. We further part company with the District Court in terms of what this evidence may suggest about the Defendant's knowledge of the involvement of the U.S. entity in such sales. As all the evidence suggests that Mr. Sabzali was a star salesman in the Caribbean, it would be not be an impermissible leap to infer that an involved president of the company would know why that was so and how it was occurring.