CBS and former chief executive Les Moonves to pay $30.5mn over sexual misconduct claims

CBS and its former chief executive Les Moonves will pay a total of $30.5mn, the New York attorney-general’s office said on Wednesday, after the company was accused of concealing knowledge of alleged sexual misconduct from shareholders.

The New York attorney-general’s office said an investigation found that executives at the media organisation were informed by the Los Angeles Police Department of a complaint against Moonves in 2017. They hid this information from investors for several months and allowed a senior executive with knowledge of the matter to sell millions of dollars of CBS shares during the period, the attorney-general’s office said.

The bulk of the $30.5mn paid by Moonves and Paramount Global, which now owns CBS, will be returned to shareholders, the attorney-general’s office added.

“CBS and Leslie Moonves’ attempts to silence victims, lie to the public, and mislead investors can only be described as reprehensible,” Letitia James, the New York attorney-general, said in a statement.

“As a publicly traded company, CBS failed its most basic duty to be honest and transparent with the public and investors,” she added.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter concerning events from 2018 with the New York attorney-general’s office, without any admission of liability or wrongdoing,” the company said in a statement. “The matter involved alleged misconduct by CBS’s former CEO, who was terminated for cause in 2018, and does not relate in any way to the current company.”

Moonves, who at his peak was one of Hollywood’s highest paid and most powerful media executives, resigned in September 2018 after a series of reports in which women accused him of sexual misconduct, including assault. Moonves has consistently denied any wrongdoing. A lawyer for Moonves did not immediately return a request for comment.

The New York attorney-general’s office said that hours after a woman walked into a police station in Los Angeles in November 2017 and reported that she had been assaulted by Moonves, a commanding officer in the department called a CBS executive and left a voicemail providing an outline of the incident.

“It’s confidential, as you know, but call me, and I can give you some of the details and let you know what the allegation is before it goes to the media or gets out,” the officer said in the message, according to James’s office.

Several other executives were informed of the call in the ensuing weeks, and were in contact with the LAPD officer, who continued to feed CBS details of the confidential investigation, the attorney-general’s office said.

However CBS’s management failed to tell the market of the matter in a timely manner, the attorney-general’s office said, even as further allegations surfaced.

The network also fired star anchor Charlie Rose, who was accused of sexual harassment, during that period.

When the accusations against Moonves were made public in a New Yorker article published in July 2018, CBS’s shares fell by almost 11 per cent.

CBS will pay $28mn, of which $6mn will go towards “strengthening mechanisms for reporting and investigating complaints of sexual harassment and assault”, the attorney-general’s office said.

Moonves will pay $2.5mn, which will go to CBS shareholders. He will also be barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company doing business in New York for the next five years without written approval by the attorney-general’s office.