Gary Bland
The state’s top investment officer has resigned amid a pay-to-play scandal that’s the subject of federal and state criminal investigations.
Gary Bland resigned Wednesday in a letter to Gov. Bill Richardson.
The spokesman for the State Investment Council (SIC), Charles Wollmann, said he had no comment. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos did not immediately respond to a request for comment and a copy of the regisnation letter.
Wollmann would confirm that an Associated Press article about the letter was accurate. According to that article, Bland’s letter states that he is “saddened and disappointed” to leave the job, but does not explain why he’s resigning.
The Albuquerque Journal reported it had learned that the SIC had planned to meet in emergency session Thursday morning “for a possible vote of no confidence in Bland.” The newspaper said the governor plans to start the process of naming a replacement.
The investment scandal
Bland, a political appointee of the governor making $301,000 annually, has been near the center of controversy for months. Saul Meyer, the founder of the investment firm Aldus Equity, pleaded guilty in New York earlier this month to felony charges related to a kickback scheme that reaches all the way to New Mexico.
In pleading guilty, Meyer admitted to recommending “investments that were pushed on him by politically-connected individuals in New Mexico” while Aldus was the investment adviser to New Mexico’s SIC and Educational Retirement Board, according to a New York attorney general news release announcing Meyer’s guilty plea.
The individuals in New Mexico Meyer spoke of 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.
The allegations against Meyer include that he helped the son of the New York state comptroller win a lucrative contract in New Mexico for a firm he was representing. According to the criminal complaint against Meyer, he sought and received control over an additional $200 million from a New York pension fund from then-N.Y. Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi in 2006.
At the time, Aldus was already doing business with the SIC in New Mexico, and, a week after Aldus won control over the additional $200 million in New York, the company recommended that the SIC invest as much as $30 million with a fund called Catterton VI. The SIC later invested $25 million with the fund.
The third-party marketer who helped Catterton win the New Mexico contract was Daniel Hevesi, son of the New York comptroller. He was paid $250,000 for his work on the deal.
The criminal complaint, quoting records obtained by the New York AG, states that, in May 2006, Daniel Hevesi thanked Meyer “for NM.”
Is Marc Correra one of the ‘politically-connected individuals?’
Both N.M. Attorney General Gary King and federal agents are investigating the investment scandal in New Mexico. To date, no government officials in New Mexico, including Bland, have been implicated in wrongdoing in the case.
But there’s been widespread speculation that Meyer might have been referring, when he spoke of “politically-connected individuals in New Mexico,” to 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.
The governor’s office has said Richardson never had contact with Meyer, and has previously said the governor never talked to Correra about state investments. Correra’s attorney, Sam Bregman, has said his client has committed no crime.
Bland’s role in shining light on housing authority scandal
It’s also worth noting that the Journal and I have written articles recognizing that Bland, as I put it in July, “deserves credit for standing up against shenanigans in the state’s housing authority system.”
The Journal’s Thomas Cole wrote that Bland “kept the public light shining on the (Region III Housing Authority) when others would have preferred it be turned off.”