U.S. to slash payouts from 9/11 victims fund

(Reuters) – The special master overseeing a U.S. government fund to compensate victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Friday said future awards will be significantly reduced, typically by at least 50 percent, because the fund is running short of money.

Rupa Bhattacharyya, the special master, said the reduction in payouts from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund is necessary because the remaining $2.375 billion is not enough to compensate the thousands of additional eligible victims and family members.

“I am painfully aware of the inequity of the situation,” Bhattacharyya said in a statement. “But the stark reality of the data leaves me no choice.”

The fund originally had $7.375 billion. About $5 billion has been awarded on more than 21,000 claims, roughly three-quarters of which came from New York.

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001 when airplanes hijacked by al Qaeda crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington, and a Pennsylvania field.

The compensation fund opened in late 2011, seven years after a similar fund ended operations.

Nearly 40,000 compensation claims have been filed in the last seven years, but half were filed in 2017 and 2018. Thousands more are expected.

Bhattacharyya attributed the faster pace of claims to the growing number of serious illnesses and deaths linked to the attacks, and the fund’s warning in October that future payouts might be reduced.

The new procedure calls for base payouts, before any offsets for sums awarded from other sources for the same injuries, to be reduced by 50 percent for claims submitted before Feb. 2, 2019, and by 70 percent for claims submitted later.

People have until Dec. 18, 2020 to file claims.