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  Date / Time: 3/26/2009 8:26 PM UTC

  AIG Pushed Up Timing Of Bonus Payments, Documents Show
  

  AIG told employees of its Financial Products subsidiary on Dec. 29 that it was accelerating the "retention payments" promised to them, delivering 30 percent of the bonus totals -- $55.4 million -- ahead of schedule.
  
  A memo from the company to employees did not give a reason for the move, although the AIG executive who wrote the memo explained that several other compensation plans had been amended because of new federal tax laws.
  
  The memo was part of subpoenaed documents given Friday to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who released the documents to The Courant Wednesday – revealing significant details about the $218 million in bonuses made by the ailing insurance giant.
  
  The records are peppered with dozens of death threats and other inflammatory statements e-mailed to AIG and its employees, though that correspondence was not subpoenaed by Blumenthal's office.
  

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  In the Dec. 29 memo, the executive – whose name was blacked out of the copies given to The Courant – made the point that the deadline for AIG to make the payments under the plan was in March.
  
  It remains unclear whether the early payments were related to AIG's federal bailout. A company spokesman declined to comment on the acceleration Wednesday night.
  
  Blumenthal said it may have been a tactic used to ensure the money would get to employees before the company's collapse.
  
  "They may have been accelerating the payments to ring-fence this money," Blumenthal said. "These documents paint a very damning portrait of irresponsibility and even greed."
  
  The 464 pages of documents include outlines of the bonus plan and drafts of employee contracts at AIG, which has received $182.5 billion in government bailout money.
  
  The documents show that, among the 392 retention bonuses paid to employees of AIG Financial Products between December and March 15, the median amount was $248,750. The largest payment, reportedly to executive Douglas Poling, was $6.4 million, and the smallest was $1,000 -- but only 19 people received less than $20,000.
  
  Below Poling's payout -- which he has said he will return -- are five payments of nearly $4.7 million, one of them delivered to a former employee, the records show. A total of 53 bonuses were paid to people who are no longer with the company, the documents show.
  
  The documents do not include the names or job titles of people who received bonuses, and they do not give the employees' base pay.
  
  A fact sheet dated Feb. 4 reported that Financial Products employed 211 people at its Wilton headquarters. The rest worked out of the company's London, Tokyo and Hong Kong offices.
  
  New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has estimated that 47 percent of the bonus money was paid to AIG employees working in the United States.
  
  
  'You Won't Be Safe'
  
  The bonuses have incensed politicians and taxpayers across the country. AIG has worked to protect the identity of its Financial Products employees, and its CEO, Edward Liddy – who asked employees with bonuses of $100,000 or more to give half back -- has made the point that very few people worked on the credit default swaps that ran the company into insolvency.
  
  To drive home the point about employee safety, AIG scattered in its records to Blumenthal various threatening e-mails and statements it found on the Internet.
  
  In one e-mail sent to a general AIG address, a person wrote: "Stay out of my neighborhood. You won't be safe there." In another, which Liddy cited in testimony before Congress, a person recommends that all AIG executives and their families be "executed with piano wire around their necks -- my greatest hope."
  
  From another e-mail: "If the government can't do this properly, we the people will take it in our own hands and see that justice is done. I am looking for all the CEO's names, kids, where they live ...."
  
  The company defends its bonus payouts in a Jan. 29 document, titled "Rationale for FP Employee Compensation," in which it states that the plan was designed to retain employees at a time when market losses had created "tremendous uncertainty" for them. AIG estimated that it would cost the company "hundreds of millions, if not billions" to "unwind" AIG's Financial Products arm without the help of current employees.
  
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