LA. OWES $1.2M TO FAILED INSURER:

A judge in Baton Rouge, La., told the state it must pay more than $1.2 million to the owner of a failed insurance company, years after two former consultants hired by the state pleaded guilty to illegally handling the company’s assets. The Associated Press reported that State District Judge Janice Clark ruled in favor Barbara Presley, former owner of ANA Insurance Group of Metairie. Clark said the two contractors, Richard Bickerstaff and Charles Reichman—hired by former state Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown to take charge of the company’s liquidation—tried to earn money off the company’s assets. Brown put ANA into receivership in the early 1990s and hired Bickerstaff and Reichman to take control of its assets, according to Presley’s attorney, Lewis Unglesby. Reichman was in charge of selling ANA’s assets to pay off the company’s debts, as required under state law. But Bickerstaff reportedly bribed Reichman and held some of ANA’s stock. Unglesby asserted that if the ANA stock had been sold before it crashed the company would have avoided bankruptcy and could have paid off its debts. Reichman was sentenced in 1996 to 18 months in prison for taking bribes and Bickerstaff was sentenced in 1995 to six months at a halfway house for failing to report a felony associated with the payoffs to Reichman. Brown was unaware of the illegal behavior, according to Unglesby.