Fox News has been publicly accused of hiding legal settlements with former employees who accused former chief Roger Ailes and current host Bill O'Reilly of sexual harassment, but how exactly would they hide that from shareholders and investors?
According to sources who spoke to the Financial Times, Fox distributed settlements through their payroll department to make it appear as if they were salary payments.
This, according to the Financial Times, is what federal prosecutors and a federal grand jury will review this week.
Aided by the US Postal Inspection Service, which typically takes on fraud and mail-related cases, prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in the southern district of New York have subpoenaed witnesses. At least two of those individuals, including Mark Kranz, a former Fox News chief financial officer, have been offered immunity in return for their testimony. [...]
Two people with knowledge of the company’s finances said settlements to former employees were paid out in large amounts in the form of salary long after the individuals had left the organisation. It is not uncommon for companies to resolve settlements through salary distributions but employees in the payroll department at Fox News were instructed by senior executives to delete manually the names of individuals receiving confidential settlements paid as salary, the two people said.
If true, this would seemingly corroborate the claims of Fox News employee Monica Douglas.
Douglas filed a lawsuit yesterday claiming network executives ignored a long pattern of racial discrimination by former Fox News comptroller Judy Slater because Slater 'knows too much' about the network's secret legal settlements. The Financial Times report indicates that Slater, who was fired just last month, is at the epicenter of this scandal.