Swank sacking some staff over Chechen gaffe (IND, DH)

By Nancy Tartaglione-Moore

Over the weekend it emerged that Hilary Swank is cleaning house following a gaffe that placed her at the recent birthday party of Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov.

According to The Independent, Swank last week fired her manager of eight years, Jason Weinberg. Deadline confirmed the report.

Amie Yavor and Josh Lieberman, two of Swank's CAA reps, along with the people who made the Chechen booking, also face being moved off her team, the report said.

Following the snafu, Swank said she would donate her reported six-figure fee to "various charitable organizations" and apologized for appearing at the event.

Per The Independent:

Mr Weinberg's role in the saga was particularly unfortunate. Just before the event, the talent manager - whose clients include Madonna, Demi Moore and Lindsay Lohan - wrote an email to the New York-based Human Rights Foundation saying Swank had "no current plans to attend". That was clearly untrue. But a source close to the controversy denied a deliberate effort to mislead. "Jason was never properly told about the Grozny event," the source said. "The booking was handled by Hilary's lawyer, Jeff Bernstein, and her team at CAA. Jeff drafted the misleading statement. Jason just sent it. He's the fall guy in all this."

Swank is apparently not leaving CAA where her partner John Campisi is an agent.

"There's a world of s-t going down at CAA over it...," a knowledgeable source told Deadline's Nikki Finke.

Swank's appearance at the party and the resulting brouhaha last week sparked Global Philanthropy Group to launch a confidential service aimed at providing leaders in the entertainment industry with information on the human rights records of people with whom they are considering doing business.

Meanwhile, human rights groups were up in arms over the weekend concerning Relativity's "21 and Over" which is shooting in a Chinese province where a blind activist has been held under brutal house arrest. More on that and Relativity's response can be found at Deadline here.