UPDATED on Monday at 11 am with David White's response.
The consulting company belonging to the Screen Actors Guild’s new national executive director, David White, shut down shortly before he was hired because of his ties to a New York lawyer accused of a $380 million fraud scheme, Marc Dreier.
Dreier, who remains under house arrest in Manhattan, was arrested on December 7. White’s company Entertainment Strategies Group appears to have ceased operations that month.
A SAG official said that the guild was aware of this connection when White was hired.
But the new national executive director was not vetted until last Saturday at a board meeting, according to one member who was present but declined to be identified. White’s $400,000 contract was approved by a majority of the SAG board on Saturday.
White, a former general counsel at SAG, was hired precipitously by the guild on January 26 in the wake of the ouster of national executive director Doug Allen.
According to documents filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission 11 days before White’s appointment, his consulting company Entertainment Strategies Group is among 10 companies that were “in whole or in part, or controlled by, related to, or associated or affiliated with” Dreier.
Brown Woods George and Pitta & Giblin, the firm that represented SAG president Alan Rosenberg and Co. in its defunct suit to impede Doug Allen’s firing, are also among the ten companies associated with Dreier. Dreier’s assets have been frozen, including his interests in the affiliated businesses such as White’s.
White’s connection to Dreier does not mean that he was involved in any alleged fraud with the lawyer. But the timing of the closing of ESG, so near to White’s overnight hiring in the wake of Allen’s ouster, suggests that it might be something SAG members may have wanted to know.
White sent the following statement to TheWrap about his ties to Dreier, noting that he disclosed the tie before his engagement at SAG :
"ESG was a consulting firm established to help lawyers, talent representatives, producers and other entertainment industry professionals who struggle with the complexities of collective bargaining agreements.
"In addition to responding openly to questions asked about ESG and its investor, Marc Dreier, during the most recent Hollywood Board meeting, I shared this and other information about ESG with the National Board of Directors prior to its approval of my employment contract. ESG has ceased operations and I am focused on my job at SAG, which certainly requires all of my attention.'"
Asked why SAG had not publicly disclosed this information about White, SAG spokeswoman Pam Greenwalt declined to comment.
The board member who was at the closed executive session said the board did not have the opportunity to question White about his involvement with Dreier – or about a list of ESG’s clients, which included the MPAA.
White was not present at the meeting, though members of Membership First asked he be brought in for vetting.
