NEW YORK — The Martin Act, which gives the New York attorney general extraordinary enforcement powers, will drive companies out of the state unless businesses lobby to change it, according to Starr Insurance Holdings Chairman and CEO and longtime AIG boss Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

Greenberg has had his own run-in with the Martin Act in a seven-year-old case regarding a transaction that occurred over a decade ago between AIG and Berkshire Hathaway's General Re Corp. Investigators in New York have claimed General Re helped AIG inflate loss reserves without actually transferring risk. 

According to a 2004 story in the legal magazine, Legal Affairs, the Martin Act empowers the AG to subpoena any document, to choose between filing civil or criminal charges at any time and to win a case without proving that a defendant intended to defraud anyone. People called in for questioning also do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination, according to the article, which notes, "Combined, the act's powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state." 

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