MAURICE “HANK’’ Greenberg, former chief executive of American International Group (AIG), fabricated documents and lied under oath in a bid to rewrite history and cloud who is the rightful beneficiary of a large and valuable block of AIG stock, AIG lawyer Ted Wells told a federal jury.

Mr Wells, delivering closing arguments in a high-profile trial over rightful ownership of the stock, said Mr Greenbergs assertions at trial that the beneficiary of the stock was always intended to be a charitable trust was no more than an attempt to cover up a pledge made 35 years earlier.

AIG contends that Starr International, a private company that was once closely affiliated with the insurer, established a trust to fund a retirement plan in the 1970s. But in 2005, Greenberg and other Starr International voting shareholders threw out the compensation plan within days of Greenberg being ousted by the insurer. “What do they do when Greenberg is fired? They go out and rescind . . . their oath. That is part of the cover-up,’’ said Wells. AIG is suing Starr to reclaim $4.3 billion of proceeds from stock sales and to wrest back $185 million in other shares. It aims to bring funding for the retirement plan in-house.

Mr Wells pointed to a long trail of evidence established by Mr Greenberg when he was chief executive, including videotaped speeches, memorandums and a letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Irish tax authorities, saying the stock was always meant to fund the AIG executive retirement plan. A federal jury has the task of deciding whether a trust that AIG claims was established to hold the shares to fund the executive retirement plan was breached, and whether Starr International unlawfully sold shares to fund investments. Greenberg continued to run Starr International after he was fired from AIG.

David Boies, a lawyer for Greenberg and Starr, told jurors AIG, not his client, was the one guilty of fabrication.– (Reuters)