30,000 Documents

Instead, he took the U.S. to court. In its suit, one of his Starr companies says the government paid $500,000 for 79.9 percent of AIG’s stock, then worth more than $20 billion, and didn’t get shareholder approval. The complaint says the U.S. offered a loan at an “extortionate” rate, about 14 percent, while propping up banks on better terms. AIG’s board accepted the rescue, which swelled to $182 billion and led to a better outcome than bankruptcy, the government has argued.

“You got to fight for what you believe in,” Greenberg said in his office. “You can’t have everybody thinking the same way. It’s not normal.”

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler sided with him several times during the trial. When AIG refused to join the case, the judge criticized a lawyer for the Treasury Department for leaning on the company’s board. And a few of the 30,000 government documents Wheeler ordered turned over to Starr showed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s outside advisers doubting the bank’s authority to demand AIG stock and looking to avoid a shareholder vote.

“What seemed like a Don Quixote kind of approach has suddenly become too close to call,” said Evercore Partners Inc. adviser Tom Leonardi, who was Connecticut’s insurance commissioner until last year.

A verdict is expected in the next few weeks.

‘About Power’

Other judges haven’t always seen things Greenberg’s way. State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos, who’s overseeing the New York suit alleging that sham transactions boosted AIG’s reserves, called the case “devastating” in a 2010 hearing. Greenberg, who said in a court filing that the case relies on false testimony and is a waste of taxpayer money, was rejected when he asked Ramos to disqualify himself and lost a bid to remove him. Last year, another judge threw out many of the defamation claims against Spitzer. Both sides have appealed.

“It is so not about money,” Greenberg’s daughter said about the cases. “It’s about position. It’s about power. It’s about being right.”

Greenberg has Starr in the meantime. Brochures stacked neatly on his security director’s desk list insurance offerings for extortion, environmental pollution and legal errors. His book lambastes attorneys, especially Richard Beattie, who advised AIG’s outside directors when Greenberg resigned.

In his Starr office this month, he said the U.S. has changed over the past two decades. He wouldn’t say how or if it makes him happy. “Happy with it? What kind of question! I don’t get happy or sad by the day.”

Sick Snowball

Ernie Patrikis, general counsel for the New York Fed and then for AIG until 2006, said there’s a softer side to his former boss. He remembered Greenberg saying in a meeting that he was glum about his sick dog, Snowball. Then he ordered colleagues there not to share his feelings with others.

“Human nature tends to make people become more complacent, less driven,” said another former colleague, Brian Duperreault, who runs Bermuda-based Hamilton Insurance Group Ltd. “You start to accept things, because you know you try to change them and you can’t. He never accepts anything.”

Greenberg and Beattie had a brief reunion in the Four Seasons Restaurant, a few blocks from Starr’s Park Avenue office. When the lawyer said hello, Greenberg walked away.

Then he came back and asked the lawyer if he slept well at night. Beattie said he did. Greenberg told him that he shouldn’t, and left.

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