TWO ARE CHARGED IN BILLING INVESTIGATION

Prosecutors charged a current and a former executive of Ogilvy &
Mather Worldwide in New York yesterday with conspiring to defraud the
government by overbilling the White House Office of Drug Control
Policy for work on its ad account.

The executives, Thomas Early and Shona Seifert, were charged by the
United States attorney's office in New York with falsifying time
sheets and other documents to overbill the drug office from May 1999
through April 2000.

Ms. Seifert, who left Ogilvy in January 2002 to become president at
the New York office of TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide
division of the Omnicom Group, said in a statement that she was
innocent and planned to contest the charges. Mr. Early could not be
reached yesterday; his assistant said he was not available and
referred calls to the agency.

A statement issued by Ogilvy, part of the WPP Group, said, "We are
aware that several individuals have been charged in connection with
actions that are alleged to have been taken while they worked on the
initial O.N.D.C.P. contract," which the agency was first awarded in
1998.

"If true, their behavior was inconsistent with the high standards the
company promotes and maintains," the statement said.

In the years described in the indictment, Mr. Early was senior partner
and director for finance at Ogilvy, while Ms. Seifert was senior
partner and executive group director, serving at times as project
director and co-project director on the account.

In February 2002, Ogilvy paid $1.8 million to settle charges of
overbilling the drug office, which paved the way for the agency to
continue handling the account despite efforts by some Republicans in
Congress to bar Ogilvy from doing so. The settlement did not affect
the criminal investigation into the agency's employees, which led to
the indictments.