Mindless Background Verification

My classmate worked for a company for 2 years and then she went for higher studies. After her higher studies, she joined back the same company and has been working for the last 7 years. After having experience of 9 years in that company, now, that company wanted to verify her background.

She gave her classmate's phone number with whom she studied for 1.5 years in her post graduation 7 years back. That company called her classmate and talked for 10 minutes about her and happily closed the background verification.

I cannot find more funny thing than this. If a person has been working for a company for 9 years, still do they need background verification? Working for a company for 9 years is pretty long in the software industry. If a person works for a company for 9 years, then after the employee's family and immediate relatives, the company is the one which would be knowing more about the employee than anybody else. Still, why do they need references of people who know much less about the employee than the company? Do they think that, those who worked with the employee briefly 7 years back can provide better information than the company in which she has been working for the last 7 years?

I cannot understand who comes up with this kind of great policies in the corporate world.