It didn’t take much arm-twisting on Wall Street to find people to rat out Dick Grasso’s paycheck scams.
One prime witness, Frank Ashen, the head of human resources at the New York Stock Exchange, got left holding the bag with damaging documents that had been doctored.
Ashen said he concealed lumps of pay of as much as $18 million a pop, by removing large sums from his worksheets and spreadsheets before he presented final pay recommendations to the NYSE’s Board of Directors for approval.
After directors signed off, Ashen would restore the numbers in order for payroll to cut the excessive paychecks without the board’s knowledge.
As part of his settlement deal, Ashen agreed to give back $1.3 million of the $1.9 million in bonuses awarded to him by Grasso during the three-year pay scandal period.
Another gold mine of evidence came from an outside consulting firm that Grasso and Langone brought in to crunch the numbers Grasso wanted.
Mercer Human Resources Consulting Inc. admitted to investigators that its report to the board contained “omissions and inaccuracies,” and provided key documents.
For example, Mercer had concealed a bombshell internal memo saying that each $1 million increment in a certain bonus plan for Grasso would trigger a $6.8 million increase in lump-sum payments later. Mercer agreed to give back about $440,000 in fees it collected from the NYSE.
Also cooperating was the law firm Vedder Price, Kaufman & Kammholz, which pay panel head Ken Langone brought in to examine Grasso’s pay.
When the law firm raised issues about the pay and alleged conflicts of interest, Grasso cut the law firm out of the information loop to stop any scrutiny, Spitzer said.
Another cooperating witness was Carl McCall, who took over as temporary head of the compensation committee when the pay scandal erupted last year.