描述
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled securities fraud charges against MBIA Inc., one of the nation’s largest insurers of municipal bonds, arising out of a sham reinsurance transaction that was restated in 2005, which the company had previously entered into to avoid having to recognize a $170 million loss. MBIA suffered the loss when, in 1998, the Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) defaulted on bonds guaranteed by MBIA and MBIA was forced to make good on its guarantee. MBIA addressed analyst concerns about its expected losses on the AHERF bonds by representing that it had obtained reinsurance to cover them. In fact, MBIA had agreed through concessions on other reinsurance agreements to compensate the reinsurers for the losses they were certain to incur on the AHERF contracts. The improper use of the reinsurance contracts enabled MBIA to convert what would otherwise have been the company’s first-ever quarterly loss into a profit and reverse the decline in MBIA’s stock price.
