Responding to charges of improprieties at Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer's CEO lashed back Tuesday, calling media coverage of the unfolding drama inaccurate and misleading.
Speaking to members of the company's governing board, Citizens President and CEO Barry Gilway acknowledged a handful of Citizens supervisors in separate incidents behaved inappropriately but others face allegations that have been disproved or remained unsubstantiated, he said.
"The last time I looked around, we were still in the United States of America," Gilway said. "We have not been annexed to a communist regime. We still have some basic rights. Those rights include innocent until proven guilty."
Gilway requested the meeting last week after the release of hundreds of pages of documents alleging misappropriations of funds, sexual harassment, lucrative severance packages and other inappropriate behavior by a handful of Citizens supervisors between 2004 and 2010.
In one instance, a pair of Citizens supervisors took off their bras and danced at the Coyote Ugly bar in Tampa during a company retreat there in 2009. The employees in question were disciplined, according to documents released by Citizens last week.
Another supervisor was accused of practicing law in Florida without a license, an allegation Gilway says remains unsubstantiated.
Gilway said he was "disgusted" by the actions of some employees, which happened long before he took over in June. But he blasted media accounts he said took unsubstantiated information on a few to sully the integrity of the entire company.
"It is also critically important that the actions of a very, very few people over the course of four years not tarnish the reputation of 1,300 employees who come in every single day and bust their tails, even though they are getting trashed in the press on a daily basis, " Gilway said.
The company also has been under scrutiny because an internal auditing office was disbanded as the allegations were being examined.
The allegations prompted Gov. Rick Scott last week to direct his inspector general to investigate whether Citizens Office of Corporate Integrity employees were fired for conducting looking into several allegations. Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi is looking at Citizens' business expenses after allegations of stays in upscale hotels.