With everyone in Washington having dropped the ball on bailout bonus bucks, at least somebody’s doing the right thing.
MORE: House Passes Bill To Tax Bailed-Out Bank Bonuses
Beleaguered AIG bigwig James Haas, who bagged a multi-million dollar bonus, said today he’s given all the money back in the face of explosive criticism that has led to him and other execs getting death threats.
“I have rescinded my retention contract,” a tired and tearful Haas, co-leader of North American marketing for AIG’s troubled Financial Products unit, told The Post.
Speaking inside his hilltop Connecticut mansion, Haas – eyes welling with tears – declined to discuss the matter further.
Embattled AIG CEO Edward Liddy told Congress Wednesday that he’d asked recipients of the $165 million bonus bonanza to return all or some of the money.
Douglas Poling, general counsel and chief administrative officer of the unit whose collapse nearly sunk the US economy, was also set to hand back his top bonus payout of $6.4 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Sources said the men – who both live in tony Fairfield – and a handful of other execs from the unit have received numerous threats since news broke Monday that AIG had made the staggering payouts despite taking a $170 billion government bailout.
The threats came in the form of emails, notes left at homes and in mailboxes, and in some cases, via telephone to AIG offices in Connecticut and New York, sources said.
Some execs have pulled their children from school, where administrators are concerned for the safety of other students, according to area parents.
Several hired private security to guard their homes.
Among the threats to Haas was one that declared, “Jimmy Haas better not even get in his car,” said one source.
Two sources at AIG told The Post that Haas was not involved in the credit-swaps fiasco that nearly torpedoed the firm.
“He’s just a guy that got pulled into it all and is trying to help clean up the mess,” said one.
An AIG spokesman declined to discuss “personnel or security matters.”
Meanwhile, officials at AIG’s lower Manhattan headquarters sent a memo to all staff warning them to be extra vigilant as they walked in and out of the building and to not to wear anything that might identify them as employees.
Late Thursday roughly 400 protesters materialized outside the building, denouncing what they called another example of the type of corporate greed that has brought the nation’s economy to its knees.
“I just want to wake people up down here and let them know they are ruining the country,” said Deborah Laurel, a 54-year-old architect from Jersey City, NJ. “It’s time that they get patriotic and think bout the country and not just themselves.”