Is New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe of those AIG bonuses expanding?

Maybe kind of.

The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.) that Cuomo plans to subpoena AIG for documents about the credit default swaps that brought the company to its knees.

AIG has claimed that it paid those lavish bonuses because it needed to keep employees of its Financial Products unit in place, so that they could do the difficult work of unwinding the disastrous deals. But in some cases, AIGFP paid back its counter-parties in full, raising questions about how complex the job really was -- and therefore, whether AIG needed to spend so much money to get their employees to stick around and do it.

Bonuses aside, the subpoena request suggests that Cuomo's probe could end up shedding important light on the underlying question of how AIGFP managed to take on so much risk through its credit default swaps that it toppled the company and put the entire financial system at risk.

Cuomo has already obtained from AIG the list of employees who got bonuses, and has said his office is considering security concerns before deciding whether to release it.

Other investigators are also looking into the bonuses, and the swaps deals. A staffer for the House Oversight committee told TPMmuckraker earlier this week that the committee planned to soon probe the question of who at AIG knew about how the swaps were being conducted.

Nine of the top ten AIG bonus recipients have given back the payouts, according to Andrew Cuomo, the New York Attorney General who is probing the issue.

Cuomo also said, on a conference call this afternoon, that 15 of the top 20 bonus recipients from the firm's financial products unit, which is at the center of the bonus furor after causing the company's collapse last year, have returned their awards.

But he added something else that may wind up being less exculpatory for AIG: 47 percent of the $165 million in retention bonuses was awarded to Americans, he said, declaring that he expected to get that money back. That means 53 percent -- around $87 million -- of taxpayer money went to foreigners, and is unlikely to be recouped.

Cuomo said he didn't think it would be in the public interest to release the names of those who gave back the bonuses, and that his office is still assessing the risks of releasing any names at all.

This could be good.

Not content with letting New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo hog the spotlight, his Connecticut counterpart, Richard Blumenthal, has subpoenaed several AIG employees, incluing CEO Ed Liddy, to testify about those bonuses, totaling $165 million, at a legislative hearing March 26th.

Said Blumenthal in a statement:

Now living off supersized taxpayer-paid bonuses, these AIG employees have a moral and legal obligation to appear at this legislative hearing and disclose details about corporate compensation to employees," said Blumenthal in a written statement.

AIG Financial Products, the unit that caused the company's collapse and got those bonuses, is absed in Wilton, Connecticut.

These hearings should be more good theater, but it's worth asking: given that Liddy has already testified, and Cuomo will likely soon release the names of the bonus recipients, what more pertinent information will AIG employees be able to provide? Guess we'll find out...

It looks like Andrew Cuomo holds all the cards. He now has in hand the names of the recipients of both of the corporate payouts that have provoked all that populist rage lately.

A judge earlier this week ruled that Bank of America had to turn over the list of names of the 200 highest-paid Merrill Lynch bonus recipients, that the New York Attorney General has been seeking. According to reports, B of A, which now owns Merrill, did so yesterday.

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has received the names of the AIGers who got bonuses, and is weighing whether to release those names, his office has announced.

Cuomo had subpoenaed AIG for the names. Yesterday, the firm's CEO, Ed Liddy, declined to tell Congress he would cooperate with the subpoena, citing concerns about the safety of employees whose names were released.

Cuomo's full statement follows after the jump....

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It hasn't gotten much attention, but New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that he'd publicly release the names of the AIG bonus recipients, reports the New York Times.

Cuomo is investigating the payouts, as well as those made by Merrill Lynch and several other Wall Street firms. He issued a subpoena for the AIG names earlier this week.

His declaration followed the news that a court has ruled that Bank of America, which owns Merrill, must give him the names of the Merrill recipients. That ruling suggests that Cuomo will likely also get the AIG names. AIG lawyers had referred frequently to the Merrill case this week, and had delayed giving Cuomo the names pending the outcome of that case.

Yesterday, AIG CEO Edward Liddy declined to assure Congress he would cooperate fully with Cuomo's probe, citing concern for the physical safety of employees who received bonuses, were their names to be made public.

We're learning a bit more about the breakdown of those AIG bonuses -- thanks to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

In a letter sent to House Financial Services chair Barney Frank, Cuomo, who is probing the awards, wrote that seventy-three members of AIG's financial products unit were paid more than $1 million each.

And get this: Though the payments were called "retention" bonuses, 11 of those 73 millionaires, including one who got $4.6 million, are no longer even at AIG.

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The judge who will decide whether information about those Merrill Lynch bonuses should be made public has said he'll make a decision within the week, Bloomberg reports.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the bonus awards, which reportedly total $3-4 billion. Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, has refused to disclose to Cuomo which Merrill employees received the awards, and how much each got.

But we particularly liked this argument from B of A's lawyer, Evan Davis, made to Judge Bernard Fried:

Americans care about their privacy. That matters to us because if we don't try to protect it and succeed in protecting it we'll lose them to foreign banks.

Aah yes, Bank of America: famed protector of privacy. When the subject is executive bonuses, that may be true. When its customers' personal information, maybe not so much.

It looks like Andrew Cuomo has escalated things in the Merrill Lynch bonus probe.

Cuomo is now accusing the firm of misleading Congress on the matter. In a court filing made yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal, Cuomo included a November 24th letter, sent by Merrill to a House oversight committee, assuring lawmakers that no decisions on yearly bonuses had yet been made. Cuomo also filed testimony from a Merrill director, saying that on November 11th, the firm's compensation committee had decided that Merrill would pay bonuses in December, rather than January, when bonuses were usually paid (and when the firm would be under the control of Bank of America.)

Cuomo is trying to convince a judge to force Bank of America to disclose information about who got the bonuses -- which the company has so far been refusing to do.

The House Oversight committee, chaired at the time by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), had asked Merrill for information on the bonuses, as part of an effort to ensure that the firm wasn't using bailout money for compensation.

There's another interesting nugget in the Journal's report:

Mr. Cuomo also disclosed that John Thain, Merrill's chairman and chief executive, was told that he would lose any chance of succeeding Kenneth Lewis as CEO of Bank of America if Mr. Thain kept pressing Merrill directors last fall for a 2008 bonus of as much as $40 million.

"He was told very strongly that you should not do that; that you would damage yourself with the Bank of America board if you do that, and if you ever wanted a chance to be in the running for my job, then that would eliminate it," Mr. Lewis said in his testimony last month, according to the filing.

Thain soon lost his chance to succeed Lewis anyway, as he was ousted in mid January amid anger over the bonuses and Merrill's massive fourth quarter losses.

Yesterday, we noted a report in the Wall Street Journal that Merrill Lynch's top ten execs were each paid more than $10 million last year. The ten made slightly more than the top ten earners for 2007, despite the company's collapse last year.

Now, the Journal follows up by reporting that several of those execs have been subpoenaed in New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigation into Merrill's awarding of billions in bonuses.

Among the group are Andrea Orcel, who was Merrill's top investment banker, Thomas Montag, who led global sales and trading, and Peter Kraus, who ran strategy. They all now work at Bank of America, which took over Merrill after its collapse.

Another of the top ten, former Merrill CEO John Thain, has already spoken to Cuomo's investigators.

Bank of America, whose role in the bonus fiasco is also being scrutinized by Cuomo, filed a court petition yesterday to try to keep the pay information secret. B of A CEO Ken Lewis reportedly refused to answer investigators' questions on the subject when he met with them last week.