The former head of the bailed-out insurance giant AIG testified on Capitol Hill Thursday. Maurice Greenberg defended his role in steering AIG and blamed his successors after he left the company in 2005.

Maurice Greenberg: “AIG’s business model did not fail. Its management did. AIG’s business model has a long track record of success over many decades. AIG can recover from its immediate crisis, continue to be an employer of tens of thousands of hardworking Americans, and repay the assistance it has received from the American taxpayer, but only if both the government and AIG’s management change their approach in dealing with its future.”

Greenberg has come under wide criticism for running AIG when it helped create many of the complex financial instruments that caused the current economic collapse.