WASHINGTON POST– Less than a week after the federal government offered an $85 billion bailout to insurance giant AIG, the company held a week-long retreat for its executives at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., running up a tab of $440,000, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today at the the opening of a House committee hearing about the near-failure of the insurance giant.

Showing a photograph of the resort, Waxman said the executives spent $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa.

“Less than a week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation,” Waxman said. “We will ask whether any of this makes sense. “

The committee will ask the company’s executives about their multimillion-dollar pay packages — some of which they continue to receive — as well as who bears responsibility for the company’s high-risk investment portfolio, which led to its near collapse just weeks ago.

“They were getting their manicures, their pedicures, massages, their facials while the American people were paying their bills,” thundered Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), of the executive retreat at the Monarch Resort.

The House committee, which took on executive compensation at bankrupt Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers yesterday, has received “tens of thousands” of pages of documents from AIG, Waxman said.

Those documents show that as the company’s risky investments began to implode, the company altered its generous executive pay plan to pay out regardless of such losses.

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© WASHINGTON POST, 2008

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