However, Swiss law places a five-year time limit on such payments.
Such a move could be financially devastating; American hospitals often depend on such payments for half of their revenue or more.
While Mr. Boyd's comment suggests that department officials do not offer a waiver on prohibitions on such payments, some experts say otherwise.
The limit on such payments will be 1.75 times the cost of a hospital's "uncompensated care," for which no reimbursement was received.
The F.D.I.C. would have to take a recorded vote on such payments, in the name of accountability, and the payments could be recouped if the money recovered from the firm was ultimately insufficient to pay back any temporary government lending to help liquidate the company.
His office is in charge of reviewing the state's spending and signing off on such payments; the comptroller's Web site, using boldface type for emphasis, describes Mr. DiNapoli as being "responsible for ensuring that the taxpayers' money is being used effectively and efficiently to promote the common good".
After newspaper accounts telling of immigrant families receiving more than $150,000 a year in taxpayer-paid rent to live in large houses in some of London's most fashionable districts, the coalition has said that it will place a cap of $600 a week on such payments.
Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison Larry Ellison said the world's second-biggest software maker would only consider paying dividends to shareholders if Congress enacts President George W. Bush's proposal that would eliminate taxes on such payments.
There are two problems with this as it pertains to Canadian oil and gas trust dividends: The amount is considered ordinary income, so you lose your QDI tax status on such payments.
The literature on informal payments has concentrated on the main causes and consequences of such payments [ 1, 5- 11].
Patient advocacy groups and many doctors themselves have long complained that drug companies exert undue influence on doctors, but the extent of such payments has been hard to quantify.
