Mr Greed is beneficiary of secret "dead peasant" insurance
MichaelP
Yesterday we learned about "dead peasant" insurance policies where
corporate executives are named as beneficiaries from the death of
employeed - but that was referred to as having been illegal until the
1980's, Today we learn about dead slave policies where the slaveowners
were the named beneficiaries
Isn't this is a fertile field for meditation and investigation?
I recall learning that under Hitler German industry benefited from the use
of labor from the concentration camps, also that economic ties were
maintained between German industry and U$ ( and brit) Corporations. Could
it be that the Pru (rock of gibraltar) insurance co had insured the lives
of the concentration camp inmates ? And who owuld be named as beneficiary
from their death ?
MichaelP
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Calif. Slave List Could Boost Reparations Campaign
Reuters
May 1
By Andrew Quinn
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California officials on Wednesday released a
list of insurance policies issued to cover 19th Century slaves, a move
which may boost the U.S. campaign seeking financial reparations to
compensate black Americans for the legacy of slavery.
The California Department of Insurance, acting on a new state law,
released a list of eight insurance companies which issued policies to
slaveholders providing coverage in case of damage or death to their
slaves.
The policies, which named 400 slaveholders and about 600 slaves, were
issued by companies now represented by ACE Ltd.'s ACE USA unit, Aetna
Inc., American International Group Inc., Manhattan Life Insurance Co. ,
New York Life Insurance Co., Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., Providence
Washington and Royal & Sun Alliance .
California's new law, which went into effect this year, requires insurance
companies which do business in the state to report on any policies issued
to slaveholders prior to 1865, when slavery was abolished in the United
States.
The state, which helped lead the reparations drive for Holocaust victims,
is now the first in the country to require data on slave policies.
That requirement is expected to provide fresh legal ammunition for
reparations activists, who have launched class action suits claiming that
major U.S. companies profited unjustly from slavery.
The reparations campaign has become a controversial topic in the United
States, with many black Americans insisting that the nation's 40 million
black citizens deserve compensation for the suffering and loss sustained
by their slave ancestors.
Opponents of compensation say, among other things, that it happened so
long ago that reparations would be punishing people who had nothing to do
with the practice of slavery.
On Wednesday, a new lawsuit was filed in New Jersey on behalf of Richard
E. Barber, Sr., a former deputy executive director of the NAACP, naming
New York Life Insurance, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. and Norfolk
Southern Corp. Companies named in an earlier, similar suit include Aetna,
CSX Corp., and FleetBoston Financial Corp.
California insurance officials said that about 92 percent of the companies
contacted for slave-era policy information responded, although many said
they were unable to locate relevant documents in their archives.
"CHARLES" INSURED FOR $550
Nevertheless, some of the information provided helped to paint a clearer
picture of the economics of U.S. slavery.
AIG for instance located a replica of a $550 policy issued on the life of
a slave named "Charles" -- including a lengthy list of exclusions
including death by suicide.
Aetna said it had uncovered seven slave insurance policies, some of which
covered multiple lives. "Aetna expressed regret as soon as the existence
of these policies came to our attention two years ago," company spokesman
David Carter said.
"Aetna today is a place driven by integrity, fairness and a commitment to
equal opportunity. We believe that now it's important to move from this
point and focus on where our company is today and where we can be
tomorrow."
New York Life, in its response, stressed that it "abhors the practice of
slavery" and regretted that its predecessor company, Nautilus Insurance
Co., had been involved in writing slaveholder insurance. It then detailed
some 339 such policies, most of which insured slave lives for less than
$500.
The firm, one of the largest U.S. life insurers, said on Wednesday it
would hand over its archives to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, based in New York, to aid the study of the issue.
Some of the information submitted to California showed that insurers also
wrote policies for Chinese laborers.
Manhattan Life, for instance, reported that it insured a cargo of 700
Chinese workers on an 1854 trip, valuing their lives at $120 apiece. Three
of the workers jumped overboard during the journey, while 11 others died
of disease.
"Manhattan Life paid $408, one-fourth of the total loss, and consequently
made $432 on this transaction," the company reported, citing a 1961 speech
by the then-company president.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he planned to examine the California report,
which could mark the start of a thorough examination of the financial
underpinnings of the U.S. slave economy.
"We know that the slavery economy was fundamental and essential in the
economic development of the U.S," Jackson said. "This is the beginning of
the fourth stage of the civil rights movement -- gaining access to
capital, industry, and technology, and recovery from economic
exploitation."
======================
Making a Killing on Dead Peasants
URL: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/04/29/007.html
Moscow Times, April 29
By Matt Bivens
Making a Killing on Dead Peasants
"So, if there is no obstacle, you might set about preparing a deed of
sale," said Chichikov.
"What! A deed of the sale of some dead souls?"
"Well, no!" said Chichikov.
"We will write that they are alive, just as it stands recorded on the
census list. I am not accustomed to depart in any way from the laws; I
suffered for that reason in the service -- but excuse me: Duty is a sacred
thing for me; the law -- well, I am dumb in the presence of the law."
- Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"
WASHINGTON -- As every Russian business manager knows, one can do all
sorts of neat tricks with insurance policies. Moscow businesses use
insurance in tax-avoidance strategies designed by the Big Five accounting
firms: Instead of paying "salaries," they pay via tax-free insurance
annuities.
But if you think Moscow is cutting-edge when it comes to insurance games,
think again. The Wall Street Journal, in a series of amazing articles over
the past two weeks, has revealed that hundreds of leading American
companies -- among them Walt Disney, Procter & Gamble, Nestle USA and AT&T
-- have bought life insurance on millions of their current and former
employees. These employees are neither asked their permission nor
informed, and when they die, the companies quietly collect.
This perversion of corporate-owned life insurance, or COLI, has apparently
been going on since the 1980s. Corporations privately call it "janitors
insurance," or in some cases "dead peasants insurance." ("I want a summary
sheet that has ... the Dead Peasants in the third column," says a
Journal-quoted memo from the insurance consultants for the grocery store
chain Winn-Dixie.)
It used to be illegal in America to wager in this way against the life of
another. Anyone buying life insurance for someone else had to demonstrate
an "insurable interest" -- some sort of close relationship. But lobbyists
in the 1980s got states to soften those rules, and now companies can place
a bet against anyone who darkens their door, even employees who work
barely a few months. In the state of Georgia, corporations can even bet
against the spouses and children of current and former employees.
Naturally, janitor's insurance means keeping track of people for years or
even decades after they've quit. So companies assemble massive documents
known as "death runs" that list the names, ages and Social Security
numbers of workers, and the amount to collect upon death.
In some cases, employees are offered a modest life insurance benefit for
free -- but aren't informed that the company stands to benefit far more.
Wal-Mart stores offered free life insurance of $5,000 to about 350,000
workers in the 1990s, without mentioning that Wal-Mart would collect many
times that amount. In other cases, companies say nothing at all, just
quietly buy the policy and update the death runs.
The Journal articles (search for "dead peasants" or "janitors insurance"
on wsj.com) offer amazing anecdotes, like the one about the employee who
contracted Lou Gehrig's disease and asked her company for help buying a
$5,000 wheelchair so she could go to church. She was denied ("it's not
covered"), died and enriched the company by $180,000. Or the musician who
worked briefly at a music store, left, died, and yielded a dead peasant
windfall of $339,302 -- of which $168,875 was used for "executive
compensation," but that's another story.
=================
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1389781
Houston Chronicle April 30, 2002, 12:47PM
By L.M. SIXEL
Secret policies draw more wrath Oregon lawmakers call for ban
Three Oregon congressmen have called on the Oregon Legislature to outlaw
the "outrageous" business practice that allows companies to profit by
insuring the lives of their low-level employees.
The trio's call was in response to news accounts that Enron-owned Portland
General Electric bought life insurance on the lives of its rank-and-file
workers to fund its executive compensation programs. They're also asking
the U.S. House to investigate the legality of the "dead peasant" policies.
"Hard-working PGE employees have been frozen out of their pension plans by
the collapse of Enron, and now it appears the company hoped to reap
six-figure profits from their untimely deaths," according to a statement
issued by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "This loophole must be closed
immediately. We'd expect this kind of outrageous behavior from Mr. Burns
on The Simpsons, but not in the real world. Working men and women deserve
better."
A representative from Portland General did not return a call for comment.
DeFazio, along with Oregon Democrats Rep. David Wu and Rep. Darlene
Hooley, called on the Oregon Legislature to change the law when it returns
to special session in June to debate budget issues.
Sixteen states, including Texas, outlaw such life insurance, but Oregon is
not one of them, according to the congressmen. In Texas, only those with
an "insurable interest" can buy insurance on the life of another, and that
does not include an employer insuring the life of a nonexecutive employee.
John Piper, public information officer for the Oregon Insurance Division
in Salem, said Oregon's Insurance Code requires someone to have an
"insurable interest" before buying a policy, but the 1967 law doesn't
define insurable interest.
Piper said that until now, it hasn't been an issue. It's impossible to
know how common the practice is because employers aren't required to file
anything with the state when they take out the policies.
While the Senate Democratic Party leader, State Sen. Kate Brown of
Portland, said the issue has "certainly raised some eyebrows," she said
she believes it will wait until the regular legislative session reconvenes
in January because budget deficits will occupy the Legislature in June.
She said the big questions are whether employees at Portland General
Electric knew about the policies beforehand and what the proceeds were
used for.
The issue has been gathering momentum since the Chronicle revealed
Portland General Electric's purchase of COLIs, or corporate-owned life
insurance policies, on lives of its employees. The insurance, which
Portland General purchased during the mid-1980s, has generated nearly $80
million in a special trust fund that the company uses to fund special
retirement and other benefits for the utility's managers, directors and
executives.
DeFazio and Wu, along with U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from
Portland, also called on the U.S. House Education and the Workforce
committees to conduct hearings on the use of the "predatory business
practice" of using the proceeds from employee deaths to fund special
compensation and retirement benefits for top executives. Many of
Blumenauer's constituents work for Portland General.
There are a number of morally troubling issues regarding COLIs, such as
the disincentive to protect the safety of employees, said Wu's
communications director, Jennifer Helburn. She said Wu regards top
executives benefiting from the policies as "morally reprehensible."
Hooley has asked the U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital
Markets, of which she is a member, to investigate the policies.
While Oregon law requires prior consent before a company buys a COLI
policy, most states don't require any notification.
Companies typically buy the insurance policies in secret, and employees
have no way of knowing that their lives are insured to benefit their
employer. And, many times, an employee who leaves a company continues to
be insured by the former employer.
Employers buy the policies to receive tax advantages, including tax-free
death benefits and tax-free investment income accumulation.
Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, has also asked the House Energy and Commerce
Committee to conduct hearings into the corporate-owned life insurance
policies. Green introduced legislation last week that would require
companies to notify their employees if they purchased corporate-owned
insurance policies.
======================
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