Analyst Claims Fannie Mae Lied to Senate About Executives’ Pay | Timothy Skrynnikov v. Federal National Mortgage Assoc.

WASHINGTON (CN) – A senior financial analyst says the Federal National Mortgage Association fired him to retaliate for his alerting the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance that Fannie Mae had lied to it by underreporting its executives’ pay and bonuses by $271 million.


Timothy Skrynnikov says that after he told his supervisor about the discrepancy between the numbers Fannie Mae sent to Congress in 2009 and the numbers on an incentive plan spreadsheet, he was removed from his position “overseeing the executive incentive bonus compensation report.”

Senator Charles Grassley in 2009 requested information on Fannie Mae’s employee retention plans and bonus arrangements, but the agency grossly understated its executive bonuses, Skrynnikov says in his federal complaint.

“The information FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency] on behalf of Fannie Mae provided to Senator Grassley was at a great variance from the incentive compensation list that plaintiff maintained at Fannie Mae,” Skrynnikov says. “For example, Fannie Mae was asked to provide the names of all executives who received or were eligible to receive annual bonuses of $100,000 or more. Fannie Mae responded by stating that it had 92 executives scheduled to receive such bonuses in 2009, but plaintiff knew that there were more than 700 such executives at Fannie Mae eligible for such bonus amounts according to the bonus targets recorded in the monthly Employee Incentive Compensation Expense Reconciliation plaintiff received each month from the payroll department.

“FHFA … also reported to Senator Grassley that the only incentive program that existed after Fannie Mae went into conservatorship was the retention bonus program for which a total of $71.9 million was budged in 2009. In fact, though, plaintiff knew from the Employee Incentive Compensation Expense Reconciliation report he received monthly from the payroll department that Fannie Mae had budgeted a total of $351 million for executive incentive compensation in 2009.”

Skrynnikov says he was “concerned over Fannie Mae’s apparent misrepresentation of executive incentive compensation” and sent a letter to Grassley that detailed the disparity between his spreadsheet and the information given to the Senate committee.

A few months later he was stripped of the responsibility to oversee executive incentive bonuses.

He adds that he complained to a coworker about “sexual and other harassment that he had experienced in his workplace,” while his boss “accused plaintiff of not contributing the value she expected for a person in his position and with his experience.”

Skrynnikov says he developed debilitating depression and suffered a rib injury that forced him to take time off work, and his position was eliminated before he could return.

Skrynnikov seeks $4 million in damages from Fannie Mae and James Lockhart of the FHFA, alleging retaliation and violations of the False Claims Act. He is represented by Micah Salb with Lippman Semsker, of Bethesda, Md.

Full complaint below…

Timothy Skrynnikov v. Federal National Mortgage Assoc. (Fannie Mae)