"Ned himself said they Steemit Inc do not owe anybody anything."

I don't give a damn what the guilty party has to say. It makes 0 sense that you would.

Stinc stake was never legitimized, simply tolerated to a point.
If it was legitimized Ned wouldn't have hidden millions of steem in exchanges.
He knew he had to run.

Witness inaction at that time doesn't mean anything except that they were lazy and inert when they shouldn't have been so.