The Screen Actors Guild has found itself embroiled in yet another brouhaha following a report that its new national executive director David White recently shut down his consulting company, Entertainment Strategies Group, after it was identified as a company controlled by Marc Dreier, a New York lawyer accused in a $380-million fraud scheme. The report, which appeared on Sharon Waxman's industry blog The Wrap, said that members of the SAG board are angry over not being given sufficient time to vet White at their board meeting last Saturday. "We were denied the opportunity to do a full vetting of White's business and his link to Dreier," one unidentified board member told The Wrap. "We saw [ESG's client list] as a huge conflict of interest." According to the website the client list included the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major studios. White has not been accused of complicity in Dreier's alleged fraud, and another board member said that the board did not have a problem with White's association with Dreier.

26/02/2009