(Bloomberg News) Steven Cohen, the billionaire founder of SAC Capital Advisors LP, hid $5.5 million from his ex-wife during their 1990 divorce, her lawyer argued before a federal appeals panel in a bid to reinstate her lawsuit.
Howard Foster, a Chicago-based lawyer for Patricia Cohen, said Steven Cohen didn't include the money, which Foster said Steven received as part of a settlement of a real-estate dispute, on his 1989 financial statement.
"The financial statement was wrong and deceptive," Foster today told the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan. Martin Klotz, a lawyer for Steven Cohen, denied his client hid money.
In March, U.S. District Richard Holwell in New York dismissed Patricia Cohen's suit, ruling she took too long to bring the case, which was filed in 2009. The judge said Cohen made similar claims in a 1991 lawsuit in which she accused her ex-husband of hiding assets and misrepresenting the value of his investments.
Foster said today that his client didn't know about the alleged deception until 2008.
"I don't accept for a minute that he had $5.5 million," Klotz, of Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York, told the three-judge panel. "Mr. Cohen's statements about the mortgages are completely true."
Circuit Judge Pierre Leval asked Klotz why it wasn't enough for the case to continue that Patricia Cohen said in her complaint that her ex-husband left off from the statement "5.5 million bucks" he received 18 months earlier.
Klotz said Holwell dismissed the complaint in part because it didn't meet a plausibility test and there were other possible explanations such as Cohen not having the money at that point.
"Simply saying he got $5.5 million in 1986 and January 1987 says nothing," Klotz said.
Foster said that as part of the settlement, Cohen received $5.5 million in cash and a $3 million mortgage. Klotz disagreed, saying Cohen got mortgages that eventually went into bankruptcy.