Posted by Jack
NEW YORK, March 17 — Seventy-three employees of troubled American International Group received more than $1 million in bonuses under contracts that guaranteed them 100 percent of their 2007 pay in 2008 regardless of performance, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.
The revelation comes a day after Cuomo subpoenaed AIG for information regarding $165 million paid to executives and other workers in the company’s troubled financial products division, chiefly responsible for bringing the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. The firm has required $170 billion in government injections.
“These payments were all made to individuals in the subsidiary whose performance led to crushing losses and the near failure of AIG,” Cuomo said in a letter today to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Thus, last week, AIG made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout. Something is deeply wrong with this outcome.”