Columbia S&L; Paid Officers $4 Million in Bonuses : Thrifts: Many executives who received the pay have already left the troubled company.

Columbia Savings & Loan, the troubled Beverly Hills thrift that lost $591.1 million last year and is now insolvent, paid its top executives $4 million in bonuses last year, according to public documents filed Monday.

The information on the 17 current or former top Columbia executives--who received a total of $9.5 million in compensation, including the bonuses--is contained in the thrift’s annual proxy statement filed with the federal Office of Thrift Supervision.

The disclosure could prove sticky for Columbia executives, who are scrambling to save the thrift from a federal takeover amid a huge drop in the value of its risky junk bond portfolio. Indeed, many of the executives receiving the largest bonuses have left the firm within the past six months. Columbia executives declined comment.

Separately, former Columbia Savings Chairman and Chief Executive Thomas Spiegel, the savings and loan industry’s top-paid executive in 1985 when he earned $9 million, will earn $1 this year as a consultant in trying to help Columbia find a buyer for its junk bonds, the proxy statement says.

Spiegel was to have earned $500,000, the document shows, but thrift regulators objected to it. The proxy also discloses for the first time that Spiegel returned to Columbia last November $600,000 that he had received as part of his $4.1-million pay package in 1988 after regulators made it known they believed his compensation was excessive.

The single largest amount paid by Columbia in 1989 went to Christopher S. Moore, an executive vice president in corporate finance who resigned two months ago. He received $1.35 million, including a $1.15-million bonus. Moore’s job was to arrange financing deals for Columbia, a task that was effectively eliminated by last year’s federal thrift reform laws.

Lawrence K. Fish, who resigned as president in August and now heads troubled Bank of New England, was second with $1.32 million, including an $820,000 lump sum he received when he resigned.

Former chief Spiegel earned $898,922 in salary and other compensation before resigning on Dec. 31.

Columbia, whose largest shareholders are Spiegel and members of his family, suffered huge losses last year as the market for high-yield, high-risk junk bonds plunged. The thrift now is in danger of being seized by regulators.

On Friday, Columbia disclosed that it lost an additional $293.3 million in the first quarter. The thrift now has a negative net worth of $215.6 million and is $338.3 million short of the money it needs to meet the government’s most basic requirement of capital, which is the financial buffer it must maintain to protect against losses.

Spiegel’s 1989 compensation included $750,000 in salary and $148,922 in other compensation, specified as tax accounting fees, use of an automobile, use of a corporate jet and a “transfer of certain art objects at appraised value.” The amount, the proxy statement says, does not include $140,331 for life insurance premiums. Spiegel did not receive a bonus.

The proxy statement does show that although Spiegel earns only $1 a year from Columbia now, he does receive $17,400 a month in office and other expenses as he works to help the S&L; divest its junk bonds.

Still, what Spiegel received is dwarfed by what he earned in previous years. His $9 million earned in 1985, which included $5 million deferred to a special retirement fund, shook the S&L; business. Regulators objected, but later dropped their protest. He received packages worth $4.38 million in 1986 and $5.46 million in 1987.

According to the proxy statement, Edward G. Harshfield, hired in March to replace Spiegel and try to save Columbia, will earn no less than $500,000 a year under his three-year agreement, but may earn more than $3 million in other bonuses, depending on his performance. The proxy statement also says that Harshfield is being allowed to continue as general partner of a Merrill Lynch-sponsored investment fund that he was affiliated with when hired by Columbia.

Other top-paid Columbia executives included James A. D’Aquila, who resigned as chief financial officer in January. He earned $810,000, including a $650,000 bonus. And Kenneth R. Heitz, Columbia’s top lawyer who filled in as interim chief executive earlier this year, earned $800,000, including a $450,000 bonus.

Columbia’s 83-year-old patriarch, Abraham Spiegel, Thomas Spiegel’s father, earned $500,000 in 1989. The proxy statement says that his pay agreement was suspended effective May 1 until Columbia is solvent again.