Federal Reserve Bank of New York Subpoenaed in AIG Fraud Case

by Frank Gaffney

Here’s the latest in the question of the New York Fed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the AIG bailout, as we’ve covered here at Big Government before (here and here). Last year, Iraq war vet Kevin Murray brought a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and Ben Bernanke (Murray vs. Geithner, et al) for its acquisition of AIG– a scheme that made the US taxpayer the world’s largest provider of Shariah-compliant insurance products. Lawyers David Yerushalmi and The Thomas More Law Center’s Robert Muise found, in the course of discovery, that that was just the tip of the iceberg.

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Yerushalmi and Muise quickly realized that, in acquiring 77.9% of AIG, the New York Fed may have set up an illegal trust, with the knowledge that what they were to do was illegal. Tuesday, Murray’s attorneys issued a subpoena for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Here’s the latest update from David Yerushalmi:

Now that the court has allowed us to amend the complaint to add additional bad acts by the government (done and filed today) and at the same time rejected the government’s efforts to stay discovery and to end run to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and while we await the court’s ruling on our motion to force Secretary Geithner to sit for a 3-hr deposition, we have today sent out for service the following Subpoena for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This deposition will effectively allow us to learn the government’s rationale (however lame) of the How and Why of the invalid and illegal trust used to gain control over AIG.

We are expecting a battle over this one because the real skeletons of this deal are here at the NY Fed where at the time (Sept-Dec 08) Secretary Geithner served as the president and de facto Treasury Secretary, having been tapped by Obama as the new administration awaited the inauguration in Jan 2010. To understand this, read through the attachments (Notice of Service of Subpoena Commanding Deposition Testimony and the Production of Documents, Electronically Stored Information, or Tangible Things) at the substantive information we are seeking. The rest, as they say, is just commentary.

In the meantime, America awaits a ruling on whether Treasury Secretary Geithner will have to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” in a three-hour deposition.

Here are the questions from the subpoena:

1. The decision(s) to provide government financing to and otherwise bailout American International Group, Inc. (hereinafter “AIG”) and how the financing bailout was structured.

a. This matter specifically includes decisions regarding how and why the original financing provided by the government was funds provided by the FRBNY in the form of a credit facility;

b. This matter specifically includes the decision by the Fed to authorize the FRBNY to loan $85 billion to AIG pursuant to Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. § 343);

c. This matter specifically includes decisions requiring AIG to grant the FRBNY a pledge on assets and to transfer to the AIG Credit Facility Trust (hereinafter “Trust”) Series C preferred shares, which provided the Trust, inter alia, 79.9% (later reduced to 77.9%) of any dividend payments by AIG and of any aggregate voting rights of AIG common stock;

d. This matter specifically includes the decision to establish the Trust on behalf of the U.S. Treasury and to include section 1.03 in the AIG Credit Facility Trust Agreement granting the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System authority to terminate the Trust or amend its terms;

e. This matter specifically includes all subsequent decisions regarding the structuring of the government financing and bailout of AIG, including the decisions about when, how, and why to use (1) funds authorized by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, 12 U.S.C. § 5201 et seq. (hereinafter “EESA”); (2) funds not authorized by EESA, but otherwise under the control or authority of the U.S. Treasury and/or Treasury Department; (3) funds under the control or authority of the Federal Reserve Board; (4) funds under the control or authority of the FRBNY; and/or (5) any other funds under the control or authority of any other entity or agency subject to the direction and/or control of the U.S. Treasury and/or Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and/or the FRBNY.

f. This matter specifically includes the actual and permissible use(s) of funds from any government source (including the FRBNY) by AIG.

2. The information made available to the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (hereinafter “SIGTARP”) established by EESA, including information and communications to and from SIGTARP regarding the actual and permissible use(s) of funds from any government source (including the FRBNY) by AIG.

3. The facts, including communications, related to the FRBNY’s knowledge of and/or information about Islamic law (i.e., Shariah), Shariah-compliant financial products, the Shariah obligation of jihad (i.e., kinetic war and/or terrorism), the Shariah obligation of dawa (i.e., the effort to both convert non-Muslims to adherence to Shariah and/or the effort to convert all political systems or political orders to Shariah-adherent political systems), and the use of Muslim charitable donations by individuals and/or Islamic and/or Shariah-compliant financial institutions to support jihad and/or dawa, including the use of donations by certain Muslim charitable organizations to support terrorist activity.


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Posted Feb 10th 2010 at 10:51 am in Economics, Exclusives, Justice/Legal | 127 Comments