A Brief History Of AIG’s Three-Decade Duty Free Bermudan Adventure | Talking Points Memo

Yesterday we noticed the focus of the Case Against AIG And The Reckless Executives Inhaling Our Money had begun to shift from the exotic, futuristic sounding world of synthetic credit derivatives to the Old Economy business of dodging taxes. In fact, the two are inextricably intertwined — AIG FP was by far the biggest underwriter of the inscrutable options that could generate the kind of phony capital gains losses that rich people and companies use to get out of paying taxes. To really understand what Cassano and his gang were up to, it helps to have a working knowledge of the company’s history of run-ins with the IRS. Again and again AIG has been involved in schemes the IRS has deemed illegal, forcing the insurer and its clients to cough up some billions of dollars in back taxes over the past decade. The only real factor obscuring the magnitude of the malfeasance at AIG was arguably the many hundreds of banks, corporations and individuals who played along.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=144327