Weird, you'd say that if the amounts were public knowledge that it would be easy to figure out the effect on Dells bottom line.

What bothers me about cases like this is that apparently successful companies will go to any length to maintain their stockprice when things are not-so-good for a relatively short period of time. A supplier paying for the privilege of using their product in order to harm a competitor should have been enough of a red-flag for anybody at Dell to stay miles away from it, after all, enough people knew about this that it would never be kept secret for ever (and the amounts are too large for that anyway).

The punishment for this kind of trickery should not just be a fine, it should be jail time for the execs involved.

There are 'free market extremists' that believe that the government should stay out of stuff like this, but just like in a regular game you need a referee the world of business unfortunately needs institutions like the SEC to govern the world of business.

The only reason they're getting involved here is because of the effect on the stock price, if Dell wasn't a public company this would not have raised an eyebrow.