Land Commissioner Pat Lyons
Former State Investment Officer Gary Bland’s Wednesday resignation came after a private law firm hired by the State Investment Council (SIC) found that he had “pressured investment firms doing business with the state to hire certain third-party marketing or placement agents,” The Associated Press is reporting.
The AP was quoting state Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, a member of the SIC.
“He was soliciting third-party marketers, and we didn’t think it was the right thing to be doing,” Lyons was quoted by the AP as saying.
Bland declined to comment to the AP about Lyons’ allegations.
Lyons declined to identify the third-party marketers, telling the AP he didn’t want to jeopardize ongoing investigations by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Securities and Exchange Commission.
The third-party marketer who has received the most attention in recent months is Marc Correra, the son of a big supporter of the governor and a man who shared in $22 million in fees for helping investment companies win contracts in New Mexico. Correra’s attorney has said Correra did nothing criminal.
Gary Bland
Lyons’ disclosure publicly drags Bland into the center of the national pay-to-play investment scandal that has rocked New York and New Mexico. Already, Saul Meyer, the former investment adviser to New Mexico’s SIC and Educational Retirement Board, has admitted to recommending “investments that were pushed on him by politically-connected individuals in New Mexico.”
The Albuquerque Journal added to the body of information known publicly about Bland’s involvement in the situation today by reporting that Bland has “spent hours with investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission at the agency’s Denver office and with FBI agents, apparently without an attorney.” Whether he’s been meeting with them as a suspect, a cooperating witness or for other reasons isn’t clear.
The history of the scandal in New Mexico
Meyer, the founder of the investment firm Aldus Equity, pleaded guilty in New York earlier this month to felony charges related to criminal activity in that state. Noteworthy here is that Meyer was charged in New York with wrongdoing related to a New Mexico investment deal, but his plea bargain didn’t include an admission of wrongdoing related to that deal, according to Meyer’s allocution.
Meyer was accused of helping the son of then-N.Y. Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi win a lucrative contract in New Mexico for a firm he was representing in 2006 in exchange for Aldus receiving control over an additional $200 million from a New York pension fund controlled by Hevesi.
The New York AG has not said why a Meyer admission of those allegations was not part of the plea bargain. But the bottom line is that Meyer was not convicted of wrongdoing related to the New Mexico investment deal involving Alan Hevesi’s son Daniel.
Regardless, Meyer has made the other admission about recommending investments in New Mexico because of the pressure from “politically connected individuals in New Mexico.” The individuals Meyer was referring to haven’t been named publicly.
The Journal reported this weekend, in a separate article, that Meyer had agreed as part of his plea bargain to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico in its investigation here.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Meyer had admitted to the allegations related to the dealing involving Daniel Hevesi.