Greenberg Has Questions For Liddy

The former chairman of American International Group Inc. is asking the current chairman where a new, multisector, credit default swap financial venture got $35 billion in cash collateral.

Maurice Greenberg, who left AIG, New York, in 2005 and now is the chairman of C.V. Starr & Company Inc., New York, and Greenberg associates have included that question in a letter sent to AIG Chairman Edward Liddy Monday.

Greenberg and associates filed a copy of the letter with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today.

AIG announced the creation of a $70 billion multisector CDS purchase financial entity Nov. 10, at the same time that it announced other efforts to work with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Treasury to restructure the emergency financing the government is supplying to help support AIG.

“Dear Ed,” Greenberg and associates write in the letter. “We have reviewed the restructured government funding for AIG… Set forth below are some questions related to this announcement. Please respond to these questions as soon as possible. Investors in AIG securities need to know the answers to these questions and U.S. taxpayers should know how their tax dollars have been used.”

In addition to asking where the parties got the $35 billion in cash collateral mentioned in a description of the CDS purchase entity deal, Greenberg and associates ask:

- What else was paid to those CDS counterparties?