“Federal prosecutors are looking into whether Fox News Channel and its parent company tried to disguise a $3.15 million payment to a former employee who said she had a 20-year affair with the network’s former chairman, Roger Ailes, according to people involved with the investigation,” The Washington Post reports.

“Investigators in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have focused on a payment to Laurie Luhn, a former Fox booker and event planner who left the company in 2011 with the seven-figure severance package,” The Post reports. “Luhn later claimed that she had engaged in a consensual but a mentally abusive, relationship with Ailes and that several of his lieutenants facilitated the assignations and were aware of his alleged mistreatment of her.”

Luhn is one of several witnesses who have testified about her severance package and how it was documented by the network, the report notes, citing sources who are familiar with the investigation.

“The size of the payout is of less concern to the investigation than the manner in which it was accounted for, those people said. Prosecutors are investigating whether Fox News Channel and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, improperly accounted for the payments to Luhn and other ex-employees to minimize their impact on Fox’s books,” The Post reports.