AIG's ex-CEO had private jet fly stock to Bermuda [View All]

Source: Reuters

18 Jun 2009, 0555 hrs IST, REUTERS

NEW YORK: The former head of ailing US insurance giant AIG told a court on Wednesday that he had a private jet fly a large block of the company's stock to Bermuda from New York to prevent AIG from seizing it. "It was a reaction to the entire environment that was emerging between AIG and Starr International," Maurice "Hank" Greenberg told US District Judge Jed Rakoff. "It was starting to get very ugly."

A key witness in the dispute between Starr International and American International Group, Greenberg appeared peevish under questioning by the lawyer for his former company, Ted Wells. Greenberg also admitted to being "angry" at suddenly losing his job at the company that he had built into the world's largest insurer.

"Yes. It was sudden and abrupt....Yes I was angry," he told Wells when asked about his ouster. AIG is suing Starr International for $4.3 billion in damages representing the sale of millions of AIG shares since Greenberg left the insurer and the return of more than 185 million AIG shares that Starr International controls. AIG accuses Greenberg, chairman of the privately held, Bermuda-based Starr, of illegally taking the stock, worth at one point at least $20 billion, in 2005.

AIG contends the shares were pledged to fund a deferred compensation plan for selected employees. Starr disputes that saying the beneficiary of the shares was always a charitable trust. Wells told Judge Rakoff that a private jet was flown from Bermuda to New York in late September 2005 so that Starr representatives, accompanied by bodyguards, could transfer the shares to accounts in Bermuda.


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