French and US parties huddled Tuesday in San Francisco to hash out claims in a multi-billion-dollar civil suit over the fraudulent purchase of an insurance company by a French bank 12 years ago.
A squadron of lawyers representing French interests filed into a downtown hotel conference room for the two-day closed-door meeting to hash out claims that they should pay massive damages over the purchase of Executive Life by Credit Lyonnais in 1991.
The meeting over the civil claim on behalf of more than 330,000 Executive Life policy holders comes after French parties implicated in the firm's purchase agreed in December to pay a total of US$771.75 million as part of the biggest criminal settlement in US history.
A civil trial could now get underway next year as California's Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi seeks billions of dollars that they say Credit Lyonnais and Artemis made in profit on the acquisition and resale of bankrupt Executive Life's assets.
"It will work out," said a lawyer representing US interests in the mediation, who requested anonymity. "These things take time."
Those damages soar easily to US$2.4 billion, according to the California Insurance Commissioner's office and a consortium of California insurance companies suing Credit Lyonnais, the French state, and French businessman Francois Pinault, whose holding company, Artemis, has already paid US$185 million to US officials for its role in the Executive Life affair.
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