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February 3, 2006: The DOJ indicted ex-AIG honcho Maurice Greenberg's former execs in a probe of complex reinsurance deals. General Re, a crown jewel in the portfolio of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had three of its senior execs indicted. Christian Milton, former head of AIG's massive reinsurance operations, indicted on 13 counts of aiding and abetting securities fraud; former General Re CEO Ronald Ferguson, former CFO Elizabeth Monrad and Robert Graham, assistant general counsel. "The scheme was designed to mislead analysts and the investing public," said an assistant US attorney. Federal prosecutors said AIG paid General Re $5.2M — via...

5 Execs Found Guilty of Fraud in Gen Re-AIG Trial By Kenneth J. St. Onge February 25, 2008 A federal court jury in Hartford, Connecticut has found four former General Re Corp. executives and one former American International Group executive guilty of corporate fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from allegations that the five helped cook AIG's books in an effort to boost its stock price. According to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, the four Gen Re executives convicted were former CEO Ronald E. Ferguson, former CFO Elizabeth A. Monrad, and former senior vice presidents...

Warren Buffett didn't know how AIG's Hank Greenberg was going to use or misuse reinsurance products sold to the insurer in 2001. The Oracle of Omaha, who is expected to be questioned by insurance regulators in two weeks about the deals with AIG, "was not briefed on how the transactions were to be structured," his company, Berkshire Hathaway, said yesterday. Neither was Buffett, 74, briefed "on any improper use or purposes of the transactions"........ Greenberg and AIG are under fire from both federal and state regulators for the structure of several deals, including those with Buffett's General Reinsurance, that were...

AUSTRALIAN regulators are taking on billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world, over his role in the collapse of insurance giant HIH. The insurance regulator has given General Reinsurance (Australia), owned by Mr Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, two weeks to show cause why it should not be investigated over its reinsurance dealings in Australia. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has intensified efforts to clean up the industry in the wake of the HIH collapse, disqualifying three more executives and revealing yesterday that a further 19 people were under investigation. The latest sanctions take to 21 the number...

Warren Buffett, who's made his billions guessing the future of the market, is offering a much scarier kind of forecast these days. The "Oracle of Omaha" has been using recent public appearances to predict new terrorist attacks on the United States. At Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in May, typically a confab of cone-head value investors terrorized by lofty price-to-earnings ratios, Buffett declared that detonation of a nuclear device in an American city—"$1 trillion nuclear event" in Manhattan, for example—was inevitable. "We're going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country. It will happen. Whether...