The Justice Department said that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should not be compelled to testify in Maurice “Hank” Greenberg’s lawsuit over the government’s bailout of American International Group Inc. (AIG), Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Starr International Co., Greenberg’s closely held investment firm and an AIG shareholder, has not shown the “extraordinary circumstances” needed to warrant the testimony because information on Bernanke’s role in the 2008 bailout can be obtained from other sources, the U.S. argued in a filing in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. Starr sued the government for $25 billion in 2011. Greenberg called the assumption of 80 percent of the AIG’s stock by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in September 2008 a taking of property in violation of shareholders’ constitutional rights to due process and equal protection of the law.
