American International Group (AIG) repaid $972 million in bailouts to the Treasury Department this week. AIG, which sold credit default swaps and other financial instruments to insure mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom, still owes $50 billion of the $182 billion provided to it during the financial crisis. The firm reduced the balance of the AIA Aurora LLC special purpose vehicle created by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to $8.4 billion. AIG funded the latest repayment using funds held in escrow from its sale of former life insurance arm, American Life Insurance Company, to MetLife Inc. (MET). The transaction is AIG’s sixth major payment to the government this year, bringing the total repaid to the Treasury in 2011 to $45 billion. Overall, the Treasury has received $317 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program repayments so far, roughly 77% of the $413 billion doled out. “We continue to make steady progress toward our goal of America’s taxpayers recouping their entire investment in AIG,” said President and CEO Robert Benmosche. “I am confident that AIG’s employees will continue to work hard so we can achieve this goal.” The preferred equity interests created in the special purpose vehicle were designed by AIG and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to exchange it for a reduction in the balance outstanding and available credit under the original $85 billion line of credit provided to AIG by Fed officials and the Treasury. Write to Kerri Panchuk.