Execs' posh retreat after bailout angers lawmakers

WASHINGTON — Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc., the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.

The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy.

The retreat didn't include anyone from the financial products division that nearly drove AIG under, but lawmakers were still enraged over thousands of dollars spent on catered banquets, golf outings and visits to the resort's spa and salon for executives of AIG's main U.S. life insurance subsidiary.

"Average Americans are suffering economically. They're losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., scolded. "Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."

The hearing also revealed that AIG executives hid the full range of its risky financial products from auditors as losses mounted, according to documents released Tuesday by a congressional panel examining the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.

The panel sharply criticized AIG's former top executives, who cast blame on each other for the company's financial woes.

"You have cost my constituents and the taxpayers of this country $85 billion and run into the ground one of the most respected insurance companies in the history of our country," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. "You were just gambling billions, possibly trillions of dollars."

AIG, crippled by huge losses linked to mortgage defaults, was forced last month to accept the $85 billion government loan that gives the U.S. the right to an 80 percent stake in the company.

Waxman unveiled documents showing AIG executives hid the full extent of the firm's risky financial products from auditors, both outside and inside the firm, as losses mounted.

For instance, federal regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision warned in March that "corporate oversight of AIG Financial Products ... lack critical elements of independence." At the same time, Pricewaterhouse Cooper confidentially warned the company that the "root cause" of its mounting problems was denying internal overseers in charge of limiting AIG's exposure access to what was going on in its highly leveraged financial products branch.