The New York State attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, said yesterday that he had persuaded nine of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group to give the money back, as the Senate plans to tax the bonuses, reports the New York Times.
Cuomo has been going down the list of AIG employees who received bonuses and had already gotten commitments to get back $50 million out of the total $165 million awarded last month. However, he will not be releasing any names as he previously intended.
“If the person returns the money, I don’t think there’s a public interest in releasing the names,” Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters.
Cuomo hopes to recover $80 million in bonuses paid in March to AIG employees in the United States, but he said an additional $85 million had gone to people outside the U.S., and he did not believe his office had the legal standing to pursue them.
“We have a very aggressive theory about our jurisdiction, but we don’t have a theory that gets us to London,” Cuomo said.
A person with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NYT that two recipients in the London office had returned their bonuses voluntarily, however.
Cuomo said that of the top 20 recipients in the United States, 15 had returned their payments in full. The rest included people who refused, who were still reviewing their options or who had not yet been located, he said.
A spokesperson for AIG, Christina Pretto, confirmed that employees had been agreeing to give back their bonuses, and said there had also been “a handful of senior-level resignations.” She said the company expected more resignations.