Les Moonves Fined $11K for Role in LAPD Officer’s Effort to Silence Sexual Assault Accusations

The Los City Angeles Ethics Commission handed the fine down Feb. 5

Les Moonves (Getty Images)

February 16, 2024 @ 9:00 PM

Former CBS CEO Leslie Moonves has been fined $11,250 by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission for his role in the efforts by a now-retired Los Angeles Police Department officer to keep accusations of sexual assault against him from becoming public.

The fine was handed down on Feb. 5, according to documents made public Friday.

The ethics commission determined that Moonves actively influenced the LAPD officer, Cory Palka, for his own advantage.

As has been previously reported, according to the LAPD, Palka met Moonves when he moonlighted as a security consultant at the Grammy Awards from 2008-2014. Their relationship continued after 2014 and in 2017, Palka gave Moonves and other CBS executives advance warning that LAPD was investigating Moonves for sexual assault in incidents that were said to have happened in the 1980s.

The men used code words and secretive text-messaging apps as the worked for weeks to keep the accusations out of the press, and LAPD later confirmed that Palka even shared confidential details of the accuser’s report with them. His efforts among other things gave at least one of the executives time to sell millions of dollars in CBS stock before the accusations went public.

These efforts ultimately didn’t save Moonves, who was ousted from CBS in 2018. He and Paramount Global ultimately ended up paying a combined $24.5 million to CBS shareholders to settle insider trading and sexual misconduct claims.

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