Labor Department Bars Packaging Graphics Executive From Service to Employee Benefit Plans

Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.

Chicago, Illinois - The owner of defunct Maywood, Illinois Packaging Graphics, Inc. has been barred from serving as a fiduciary or service provider to any employee benefit plan governed by federal pension law. Corporate president Kenneth Boese agreed to relinquish from his own account in the company’s 401(k) plan $15,061.68 to be reallocated to the other plan participants and beneficiaries.

Boese was removed as the plan’s sole trustee under a consent judgment and order obtained by the U.S. Department of Labor on March 12 and replaced as the plan’s sole trustee by an independent fiduciary, M. Larry Lefoldt of Lefoldt and Company of Jackson, Mississippi. The independent will liquidate the plan after paying remaining participants and beneficiaries as monies are recouped for the plan.

“This action reaffirms our commitment to protect the hard-earned benefits promised by employers,” said Kenneth Bazar, director of the department’s Chicago Regional Office of the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, which investigated the case.
The department’s suit alleged that Boese either withheld employee contributions from employees’ paychecks from April 1, 1998 through April 7, 2000 in an untimely matter or failed to remit their contributions at all from July 30, 1999 through June 15, 2001. The suit further alleged that he commingled these contributions with the corporation’s operating fund.

After Boese filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy on July 27, 2001, the department filed an adversary complaint on October 26, 2001, seeking to prevent Boese from discharging debts owed to the plan under the bankruptcy pleading. Boese’s debts were determined not to be dischargeable in an April 5 order as part of the bankruptcy proceeding.

Employers and workers can call the Toll-Free Employee & Employer Hotline at 1.866.275.7922 for help with problems relating to private-sector pension and health plans.

(Chao v. Packaging Graphics, Inc.
Civil Action No. 01 C 9252)

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Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.