The nondisclosure language was included in severance agreements dating back at least 10 years, all of them devised by the authority's counsels, and a wide variety of employees, from engineers to a former president, signed them.
Amazon.com tried to convince 1,300 of the workers it laid off this year to sign an agreement that included a clause to not disparage the company in return for more lucrative severance deals, but backed off from enforcing the clause under pressure from union organizers and also fear of a public reaction.
There was no sign that he would hand back the severance package.
Banks that received money from the relief program must also curb outsize severance packages, and pull back bonuses that were based on fraudulent or misstated results.
Asked if she would return any of the money, after the BBC's former archive chief Roly Keating handed back his severance payout, Thomson said: "No, I'm not.
Its measures include cutting back on severance pay and restricting inflation-linked salary increases.
Roly Keating, previously the BBC's director of archive content, decided to give back his severance payment in June, after helping the NAO compile its report.
Expressing their disapproval of ousted chief Philip Purcell's $60 million-plus severance package, Morgan Stanley shareholders backed a proposal Tuesday that requires the investment bank to get stockholder approval for so-called golden-parachute pay packages for departing executives.
So, whenever we talked about raising the pay for subs, it always came back to the severance pay issue.
Anne Bulford, the BBC's managing director for operations and finance, who is giving evidence alongside Patten and Hall, says the only BBC executives that she knows of who paid money back from their severance payments were John Smith and Roly Keating.
