[rayiner]

> If an office had a policy of shredding old financial paperwork and that policy was faithfully followed on the day after, say, the COO was whisked away for embezzlement, would it count as evidence tampering?

If it could be reasonably expected that the financial paperwork would be relevant to the ongoing litigation, yes, you're in trouble for destroying it. When companies are on notice of pending litigation, from that point forward they are required to take affirmative steps to preserve potentially relevant evidence. Failure to do so was one of the things that got the Enron folks in trouble.