<div><p> The man who led giant insurer AIG for four decades ahead of its near collapse took the witness stand Tuesday in a 4.3-billion-dollar legal feud with his former employer.</p><p>American International Group, taken over by the US government last year in a 170-billion-dollar bailout, is suing Hank Greenberg's investment firm, Starr International, in a New York court for the return of 4.3 billion dollars.</p><p>The battle, in which Greenberg is a key witness, but not a defendant, promises to peel back some of the extraordinary complexity of AIG, whose abrupt fall helped feed panic across the global financial market last September.</p><p>Greenberg, 84, was ousted as CEO amid an accounting probe in March 2005.</p><p>He is now accused of improperly pocketing funds in Starr International, a company that AIG says was founded as a trust to hold compensation for departing executives.</p><p>At the core of the dispute are AIG shares whose value rose from 120 million dollars to 4.3 billion in 2005 and which AIG now wants back.</p><p>Starr says the shares belonged to the investment firm and that this is a wholly separate entity to AIG.</p><p>Under questioning by an AIG attorney, in front of a jury of 10, Greenberg defended himself against what the attorney presented as written and video evidence of Starr's ties to the insurance giant.</p><p>Starr "was totally independent," Greenberg said.</p><p>Asked if Starr's management had the right to stop paying into the AIG compensation fund shortly after he lost his job at the insurer, Greenberg replied: Yes, I believe they did."</p><p>In opening statements on Monday, AIG attorney Theodore Wells said the case was "pretty simple."</p><p>"This is basically a case of asset recovery," he said.</p><p>Wells argued that Starr "was supposed to take that stock and put it in a trust and use that stock for the benefit of AIG employees, by funding a long-term compensation plan."</p><p>According to Wells, Greenberg is motivated by "anger" at being toppled in 2005 and is guilty of "betrayal" in deciding soon after his dismissal that Starr's assets did not belong to AIG.</p><p>But for the defense, attorney David Boies argued Monday that Starr is clearly a separate entity and that AIG is trying "to take the cookie jar."</p><p>"I challenge anybody to find anything in this document mentioning it's intended for AIG. There is no mention of a trust for AIG, neither of a pledge to AIG," he said.</p><p>"On the contrary, AIG repeatedly admitted that SICO (Starr International) was the beneficial owner of the so-called restricted stock."</p><p>Starr spokesman Patrick Dorton says that the company's independence from AIG has already been proven in court.</p><p>He said AIG only made its claim of the existence of a compensation trust after Starr sued AIG for the return of art work and other property that it said belonged to Starr.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=52820746&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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