March 4, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
Six directors of the Grand Marnier Foundation have paid a total of $1.5-million to the New York attorney general’s office to settle a lawsuit that accused them of having paid themselves excessive compensation over a 10-year period.
The state will hold the money in escrow until the foundation gives final approval to a new board, replacing three of the directors named in the suit with five new members. At that time, the $1.5-million will be given to the foundation, established in New York in 1984 by the president of a company, Carillon Importers, that imported Grand Marnier liquor to the United States.
In the lawsuit, the attorney general alleged that the board — made up of the founder of the import company, an employee of that company, a lawyer, and three executives of the French company that produces Grand Marnier liquor — received $3.4-million in compensation from 1990 through 1999. The payments included more than $746,000 in distributions from a pension plan, the attorney general said.
The six board members, who repaid $250,000 each to settle the suit, are Joel Buchman, Jerry Ciraulo, Maxime Coury, Francois deGasperis, Jacques Marnier-Lapostolle, and Michel Roux.
As a result of the settlement, the three French executives — Mr. Coury, Mr. deGasperis, and Mr. Marnier-Lapostolle — will remain on the board. The new members, according to the attorney general’s office, will be Isabel Wilcox, an art curator; Hattie Jutagir, director of development at Lincoln Center Theater in New York; the food journalist Raymond Sokolov; Serge Bellanger, an executive at a New York branch of a French bank; and Francois Letaconnoux, an investment banker.
Officials of the foundation did not respond to messages seeking comment on the case.
