The former Chief Financial Officer at Fox News has been offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for his help with an investigation into hush money given to alleged victims of sexual harassment, Financial Times reported.
The government is investigating whether Fox misled its investors by not reporting millions doled out to various women who claimed they were sexually harassed by former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, FT reported.
Prosecutors are hoping Mark Kranz, CFO from 2004 until last year and who left the network after Ailes was forced out last year, can connect the dots on those payments and how they were accounted for and, ostensibly, concealed, FT reported.
One such alleged payment was to Laurie Luhn, a former booker who last year told New York magazine she was given a $3.1 million settlement in 2011 after 20 years of sexual harassment and "psychological torture" at the hands of Ailes.
However, that $3.1 million payment was not disclosed, in violation of federal law. Parent company 21st Century Fox said it had no knowledge of that payment to Luhn.
New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman also reported federal investigators have convened a grand jury probing whether Fox executives wiretapped or illegally obtained phone records of journalists critical of the network.
Fox News has been a cash cow for 21st Century, bringing in annual profits of $1.5 billion, FT reported.