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Nearly a week after former Dewey & LeBoeuf chief operating officer Dennis D’Alessandro’s lawyer spoke about his client’s innocence in the alleged fraud scheme that helped destroy the firm, the trustee overseeing Dewey's bankruptcy case has sued D'Alessandro in a bid to recover nearly $9.3 million for creditors, the American Law Daily reported today. Exhibits attached to the 24-page clawback complaint filed late Friday show that D’Alessandro earned that much as the firm's COO from 2008 until his retirement in June 2011. He averaged $200,000 in annual salary — paid in monthly increments of roughly $35,000 — and another $400,000 in contractual bonuses and trust payments during those years, according to the court filings.

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration manager recommended almost seven years ago investigating why air bags in some of General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion cars weren’t deploying, a memo issued by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee shows, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The chief of NHTSA’s Defects Assessment Division e-mailed other officials in the Office of Defects Investigation in September 2007, saying owner complaints from 2005 and “early warning” data about warranty repairs and injuries justified a probe, according to the memo today from the committee. Congress is investigating an ignition-switch defect that can lead to air bag failure and has been tied to 13 deaths. NHTSA chose not to open a formal defect investigation in 2007 after reviewing the air bag data, according to an interview between current NHTSA officials and the House committee’s staff. That decision and the recall of 2.6 million cars this year are set to be the main focus of hearings this week, in which GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra and acting NHTSA Administrator David Friedman will have to explain their handling of complaints of stalling cars and air bags that didn’t deploy.

A New York judge unsealed the records of six former Dewey & LeBoeuf employees who pleaded guilty in connection with accounting fraud at the law firm, Reuters reported on Friday. The records offer a fresh peek into the government's case against top executives at the defunct elite international law firm and how key witnesses might testify against them. The employees, who range from Dewey's controller to its billing director, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors who have targeted the firm's top management. Dewey's former chairman, Steven Davis, Executive Director Stephen DiCarmine and Chief Financial Officer Joel Sanders were charged March 6 with taking part in a scheme to cheat banks and investors as they struggled unsuccessfully to keep the law firm alive.

Peregrine Financial Group Inc.’s trustee agreed to settle a dispute with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a deal that will bring more than $15 million to creditors of the commodities firm, which filed for bankruptcy after its founder looted client accounts, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Under the agreement filed yesterday in bankruptcy court, JPMorgan will pay $1.25 million and release $14 million in cash it’s holding as collateral for its claim against Peregrine. JPMorgan also agreed to reduce the size of that claim, trustee Ira Bodenstein said in the filing. Peregrine, a Cedar Falls, Iowa-based commodities firm with offices in Chicago, filed for bankruptcy to liquidate in 2012 after the National Futures Association said more than $200 million in customer funds were missing. The firm’s founder, Russell Wasendorf Sr., now serving a 50-year prison sentence for fraud and embezzlement, stole mostly from customers who traded on U.S. exchanges, the trustee said.

The former finance director of the bankrupt law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to taking part in a scheme to manipulate the firm’s financial statements, told New York prosecutors that the firm’s former chairman, Steven Davis, was nervous before a meeting with an auditor to discuss the firm’s 2010 finances, the New York Times DealBook Blog reported yesterday. Francis Canellas, in a statement made as part of his plea agreement with New York prosecutors, said he believed that Davis was nervous because he was worried the auditor from Ernst & Young would detect some of the “inappropriate adjustments” that were being made to Dewey’s financial statements by the firm’s finance team. The statement from Canellas and his plea on Feb. 13 to one count of grand larceny were unsealed yesterday by Justice Michael J. Obus of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

SAC Capital Advisors LP urged a federal judge to approve its record $1.8 billion insider-trading settlement with the government, saying the firm is “deeply remorseful” for the illegal acts of its employees, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. SAC lawyer Martin Klotz asked U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in a two-page letter yesterday to sign off on the agreement, which also calls for the firm to close its investment advisory business. A sentencing hearing before Swain is scheduled for April 10 in Manhattan. Four SAC units were indicted last year, accused of reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profit through insider trades by employees dating to 1999. Steven A. Cohen, the firm’s founder, faces an administrative action by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging he failed to supervise the hedge fund’s activities. Eight current or former SAC employees have been convicted of insider trading charges.

Mt. Gox customers with frozen bitcoin accounts are targeting founder Mark Karpeles, arguing in court papers that he is unfit to lead the Japanese bitcoin exchange through its U.S. bankruptcy case, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In bankruptcy court papers filed on Tuesday, lawyers for several Mt. Gox customers pointed out Karpeles has been accused of fraud and said that he should no longer have power over Mt. Gox's U.S. assets in his official role as Mt. Gox Co.'s foreign representative.

Jon Corzine, the former MF Global Holdings Ltd chief executive, and two former colleagues failed to win the dismissal of a lawsuit by a trustee seeking to hold them responsible for the futures brokerage's rapid demise and bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said on Monday that the trustee may pursue damages over claims that Corzine, former chief operating officer Bradley Abelow and former chief financial officer Henri Steenkamp breached their duties of care and loyalty to the company. "Defendants and other MF Global officers repeatedly increased the company's exposure to risky bets on sovereign debt and shuffled funds among MF Global's subsidiaries to cover a growing liquidity crisis," Marrero wrote. "These facts give rise to reasonable inferences that defendants acted in bad faith."

Bill-collection firm Deca Financial Services LLC missed a March 17 deadline to come up with more than $11 million to avoid involuntary chapter 11 reorganization sought by its creditors, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported yesterday. That means trustee Ellen Fujawa will take control of the firm, which in 2012 was named one of the fastest growing Indiana companies and offered $2.5 million in conditional tax credits from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. for its job-creation plans. Deca, founded in 2010, told the bankruptcy court earlier this month that it had lined up financing to pay creditors to avoid being forced into chapter 11. But David J. Tipton, an attorney for the company, said that the plan hit a snag when a potential purchaser of company land pulled out at the last minute. Earlier this month, Bankruptcy Judge Robyn Moberly told Deca if it failed to make the deadline the trustee would immediately assume control of the company.

Eastman Kodak Co. named tech industry veteran Jeff Clarke its new chief executive as the stripped-down former photo giant presses on with its reinvention, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Clarke will also continue to serve as the chairman of online travel company Orbitz Worldwide Inc., a role he has held since 2007. Clarke previously worked as an executive with Hewlett-Packard Co., where he helped integrate Compaq Computer Corp., and he co-founded the tech-focused investment firm Augusta Columbia Capital in 2012. The move comes as Kodak, a name synonymous with the fading industry of film-based photography, seeks to achieve new relevance in a digital world. The company emerged from chapter 11 in September with a focus on commercial imaging.