I suspect this type of story happens over and over again at Oracle....
There are 3 people.
The inciter - who I'm gonna call "pure evil".
The incited -
The victim -
"pure evil" is looking for ways to get new projects and get them in the hands of people who work for him who are completely and totally "loyal".
He looks outside for projects that are in trouble. Then he looks for someone in his group that can do a takeover. But that person, actually does not know what is going on.
In this story, we'll make that person the "victim".
The "incited" will be in charge of the group that is targeted for the takeover.
So, the "victim" and the "incited" are immediately in conflict.
"pure evil" works both sides.
To the "victim" he says something like, the project is so bad that a completely new application has to be written. He says he is behind the "victim" in all of this, but really he is using them and lying to them at the same time.
To the "incited" he says that "victim" is trying to take over their project. He tells them that they are doing this in spite of all he is trying to do to keep them away.
He tells the "incited" that he has a "special" way of helping them, which is truly unbelievable. I'll call this the "unbelievable way". Because it is "unbelievable", it will keep both the "victim" and the "incited" from being able to explain openly what was done, after the fact. This is his cover, the more unbelievable, the better. In addition, he will try to get the "inciter" and the "victim" to hate each other by lying on both sides.
In this story, he has done this before to other people and groups and there are other people who know what the "unbelievable way" is. It's just that no one will believe it, so no one talks about it.
No one knows who those people could be. Perhaps we could pretend there is a marketing person involved who was amazed at watching the "unbelievable way" and perhaps we could pretend that the previous manager of the "victim" might have been used also, in the same way as the "incited" was used.
When the "victim" left, maybe they tried to inform the VP that the "unbelievable way" was in use, but perhaps they only knew that the "incited" was involved. They would not have been believed, anyway, and this would only have added to their problems.
Since then, we'll pretend that the "victim" comes to understand that the "unbelievable way" was first used by "pure evil". But, they still can't do anything about it because the unbelievability factor is so high.
If the "incited" could find other people who know about the "unbelievable way", the VP in this story could already be primed. But, no one knows that but the "victim" and "pure evil". LOL, twisted logic always required in these stories.
The "victim" only intended to work on the project and use it to show what they could do in order to get away from "pure evil". They are sure that they would have been discarded by "pure evil" otherwise.