As anticipated in this post from earlier this week, John Houldsworth, a former high-level executive of the Cologne Re Dublin unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s General Reinsurance Corp., implicated four other senior General Re executives while pleading guilty on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. to conspiring to commit securities fraud. Mr. Houldsworth is the the first person to be indicted from the various governmental investigations into finite risk insurance transactions between General Re and American International Group Inc. Here are the previous posts on the investigations into AIG and Berkshire.
According to the criminal complaint, Mr. Houldsworth, Ms. Monrad, Mr. Napier, and another unknown executive in late 2000 conspired to structure a reinsurance contract to allow AIG to pass its auditor’s “smell test” and to create a paper trail to make the transaction appear legitimate.
The other executives identified in a parallel SEC civil suit who are referred to by title in the the criminal complaint are former General Re CEO Ronald E. Ferguson, former CFO Elizabeth Monrad, current senior VP Richard Napier (who is expected to plead guilty to similar charges today), and Chris Garand, an underwriter in General Re’s international finite division. The complaint also cites another General Re “senior executive” whose identity is unknown to Mr. Houldsworth.