Sony email leak: Ousted Apple exec Scott Forstall takes on SnapChat advisor role for 0.11% company share

Ousted Apple executive Scott Forstall is an advisor to ephemeral photo sharing app Snapchat and was given a 0.11% share in the company for his work.

The revelation comes from a trove of Sony emails published in a searchable database by Wikileaks, following the devastating cyber attack on Sony Pictures in late 2014, believed to have been the work of North Korea.

According to the emails, Forstall was given 50,000 shares in Snapchat, equivalent to 0.11% of the US company and based on a recent valuation of $15bn (£10bn; €13.8bn), that puts his share at $16.5m once they vest in 24 months' time. The emails also reveals former Google executive Peter Magnusson received a 0.5% slice of Snapchat for his role at vice president of engineering, but left after six months to work at Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality firm.

Credited with being the co-creator of iOS, Forstall was ousted from his vice president role at Apple in October 2012 for reportedly refusing to sign a public apology for Apple's then-new Maps application for iPhone, which was littered with errors and low-quality images when it launched earlier that year. Since then, he has not had a full-time job.

Instead, according to a report by The Information in late 2013, he was involved as an advisor for a number of unnamed technology startups and is still in contact with venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz.

Although published late last year, the emails stolen from Sony are now more accessible than ever, as Julian Assange's Wikileaks website has put them in a searchable online directory. The archive is claimed to contain more than 170,000 internal emails and over 30,000 other documents.

US intelligence officials said that North Korea was behind the attack, but this has been disputed.

WikiLeaks argued that the documents were removed "before the public and journalists were able to do more than scratch the surface," and the site's founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange said they belong in the public domain.

"This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation," he said in a statement. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geopolitical conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there."