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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Lawyers Try To Pry Documents From SEC

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) - The SEC is holding up the Williams & Connolly law office by demanding $67,200 to respond to a FOIA request the attorneys submitted 4 years ago, the law firm claims in Federal Court. It seeks records on Cosmo Corigliano, against whom the attorney filed a civil action in 2000.

The SEC announced in 2004 that it had settled an enforcement action against Corigliano "for his role in financial fraud at CUC and Cendant Corp."

Williams & Connolly says the SEC insists, unreasonably, that it must look over more than 300,000 pages of documents to respond to the attorney's FOIA request, and that it will take 6 months and cost $67,200. Williams & Connolly says that's unreasonable.

According to the SEC's May 14, 2004 press release: "Pursuant to the Final Judgment, Cosmo Corigliano and his spouse, relief defendant Agnes T. Corigliano, must transfer all their assets, except for certain exempted items, to a Court-appointed Receiver, as disgorgement of Cosmo Corigliano's unjust enrichment from a long-running financial fraud that he helped supervise and direct during his time at CUC International Inc. (CUC), the corporate predecessor of Cendant Corporation (Cendant). The assets ordered transferred have an aggregate value of at least $14 million and include all the Coriglianos' cash and securities, all balances held by them in savings, money market, IRA, Keough, pension, or brokerage accounts, and the majority of certain funds previously held in trust for the benefit of the Coriglianos' minor children, for which relief defendant Mary Louise Scully serves as trustee. ...

The Final Judgment also permanently bars Cosmo Corigliano from serving as an officer or director of a public company. Cosmo Corigliano, Agnes T. Corigliano, and Mary Louise Scully each consented to the entry of the Final Judgment, without admitting or denying the allegations of the Commission's complaint, except for jurisdiction.

"Cosmo Corigliano served as Controller of CUC from 1983 to 1995 and as its Chief Financial Officer from 1995 until the December 1997 merger of CUC and HFS Incorporated, which formed Cendant. After the merger, he was an officer of Cendant Membership Services, the post-merger name for the former CUC business units, until his resignation from Cendant in April 1998.

"The Commission's complaint alleged, among other things, that Corigliano, as Controller of CUC, assisted senior CUC officers who initiated the long-running financial reporting fraud and, later, as CUC's Chief Financial Officer, proceeded to orchestrate and refine the fraud. The complaint further alleges that, as Chief Financial Officer, Corigliano was the CUC officer responsible for creating and maintaining a schedule that CUC officers used to track their fraudulent scheme during the course of each fiscal year. He was responsible for keeping more senior CUC officers apprised about the progress of the scheme. While Chief Financial Officer, Corigliano directed CUC mid-level financial reporting managers to make unsupported quarterly top-side adjustments to CUC's earnings as reported in its quarterly Reports on Form 10 Q filed with the Commission. He also instructed less senior CUC managers to make unsupported journal entries effectuating year-end adjustments that improperly inflated CUC's operating income and earnings as reported in its annual Reports on Form 10 K filed with the Commission. The complaint further alleges that, while engaged in these activities, Corigliano signed CUC's periodic reports filed with the Commission and made materially false statements to CUC's auditors."

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