Harvard in Settlement Talks With Forum

While a judge decides whether the government’s $102 million fraud suit against the University, an economics professor and a former employee should go before a jury, Harvard is working toward a pre-trial settlement in a related case.

Harvard and its two co-defendants are in settlement talks with a Maine mutual fund company that alleges in its own suit that it too was defrauded by the leaders of a Harvard-run economic advising program in Russia.

“There are ongoing discussions,” University spokesperson Joe Wrinn said yesterday. According to the case docket, the parties are scheduled to appear before the judge on Nov. 8 to discuss “stipulations on the conditions for dismissal” of the case.

Wrinn declined to say whether the case would be settled in time for next week’s hearing.

That the University is willing to discuss settlement goes against its earlier public posturing.

Two years ago, Wrinn called the suit “baseless.”

“At the end of the day, Harvard will not be liable,” then-General Counsel Anne H. Taylor said in 2000.

Wrinn said yesterday that he would not comment on the specifics of the discussions.

The Forum Financial Group, a Portland, Maine-based financial services firm, filed suit in October 2000, claiming that Professor of Economics Andrei N. Shleifer ’82 and former Harvard employee Jonathan Hay conspired to defraud Forum and its owner of the profits from their Russian capital market ventures.

Shleifer and Hay ran the Harvard Institute of International Development’s economic advising program in Russia. The program was paid for by $50 million in U.S. government funds and helped orchestrate the privatization of Russia’s economy.

The suit alleges that Hay and Shleifer used their influence to secure for Forum the rights to Russia’s first mutual fund, and then forced its owner, John Y. Keffer, to sell his interest in the fund.

Forum and Keffer request punitive and compensatory damages against Shleifer, Hay and Harvard, which they say has “vicarious liability” and was negligent in the oversight of its employees.

Compensatory damages, the suit says, should equal the lost profits and value of the Russian fund, as well as “the financial benefit [Forum] would have received from an increase in their international business.”

The suit does not quantify these damages.

Lawyers for Shleifer, Hay and Forum could not be reached for comment.

The Forum case is in many ways a sideshow to the U.S. government’s suit—which alleges breach of contract and violations of the False Claims Act. In addition to the prominent plaintiff, the government’s suit also seeks the bigger prize— $102 million in damages.

The government alleges that investments Shleifer and Hay made in Russia violated conflict of interest policies included in the government’s contract with Harvard, and that Harvard failed in its supervisory role.

Shleifer, Hay and Harvard deny wrongdoing in both cases.

A settlement in the Forum case would not impact the government’s case—which is proceeding toward trial.

At a hearing last week, a judge indicated he was likely to send the key aspects of the government’s suit to a jury.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.