Lawsuits reveal more allegations of intrigue at HP — Things just keep getting weirder at HP. I think this sort of thing is more common in the valley than anyone wants to admit.

In a case with shades of the ongoing Hewlett-Packard spy scandal, a former HP executive claims the Silicon Valley giant secretly paid the former president of rival Dell Inc.’s Japanese division for trade secrets about Dell’s competing entry into the lucrative printer business.

The bombshell industrial espionage charges are part of a countersuit filed Friday in federal court in Tyler, Texas, by a former HP vice president, Karl Kamb. He is among four high-ranking ex-HP employees accused by the company in a $100 million civil suit of stealing confidential company technology to launch a competing flat-screen TV business.

Hewlett-Packard claims it learned of the alleged fraud in 2004 when Kamb’s wife subpoenaed the company’s records for their divorce proceeding,