Cooking the Insurance Books A Decade of Lax Regulation Lays Groundwork for Scandal

[seemslikeadream]

by Lucy Komisar, Special to CorpWatch
November 17th, 2004

In October, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against the world’s largest insurance broker, Marsh, accusing it of rigging bids and receiving kickbacks in order to defraud clients such as other corporations, city governments, school districts and individuals of billions of dollars through inflated premiums.

“Greedy trial lawyers were the usual excuse for premium increases. Now we know that greedy corporations also have a starring role," Spitzer said, accusing several insurance companies as co-conspirators in making phony or inflated bids and paying kickbacks to the brokerage to get business.

Spitzer also announced that two executives from the insurance conglomerate American International Group (AIG) had already confessed to related criminal charges. But his investigations into AIG may have only scratched the surface. A paper trail stretching back a decade reveals that AIG used offshore shell companies to skirt the law.

The current scam which Spitzer has uncovered works like this: Marsh, an insurance broker, is supposed to find the best insurance policies for its clients from a wide range of companies. Instead it steered the policies to companies such as AIG that agreed to pay kickbacks. It solicited phony competitive bids for insurance contracts to deceive customers into thinking there was real competition for their business. Marsh made $800 million on kickbacks in 2003 alone – over half its $1.5 billion profit. With a 40-percent share of the global insurance brokerage market, its fraud drove up prices for everyone.

AIG announced that its senior managers were not aware of the bid-rigging. But the family ties of three of the alleged co-conspirators make the claim hard to believe. The head of the Marsh brokerage was Jeffrey Greenberg, 53, the head of AIG is his father Maurice (Hank) Greenberg. A former AIG staffer told CorpWatch, "Greenberg is legendary as a hands-on person. Nothing happens in the company without him dealing with it. He knows the names of the elevator operators.”

Another accused collaborator is Hank's other son, Evan, 49 who just happens to run ACE Ltd., another of the companies allegedly involved in the complex scam.