{"id":4543,"date":"2009-05-07T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/05\/guv-says-he-didnt-know-about-payments-to-correra\/"},"modified":"2009-05-07T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T02:24:00","slug":"guv-says-he-didnt-know-about-payments-to-correra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/05\/guv-says-he-didnt-know-about-payments-to-correra\/","title":{"rendered":"Guv says he didn’t know about payments to Correra"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bill Richardson\u2019s<\/a> office says the governor wasn\u2019t aware of any fees investment companies doing business with the state paid to Marc Correra — or anyone else for that matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state did not pay these fees, and the governor was not informed of any fees paid by private fund managers to third-party marketers,\u201d Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos wrote in an e-mail. \u201cThose were private transactions, which were only disclosed after the state asked for more information about the fees from the fund managers who paid them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, I wrote that a couple of scandals might intersect<\/a> in the instance of Correra. He shared in more than $11 million in finders\u2019 fees as a third-party marketer for financial companies that won business with the State Investment Council<\/a> (SIC) and another $4.2 million in fees that came from contracts with the Educational Retirement Board<\/a> (ERB). <\/p>\n

That may include as much as $2 million he earned from a controversial investment deal in which the state lost $90 million — a deal that is the subject of the pay-to-play lawsuit<\/a> brought by Frank Foy on behalf of the state.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Gallegos, while insisting the governor didn\u2019t know about the fees, noted that the use of third-party marketers is \u201clegal and commonplace\u201d in the industry. Still, he noted that Richardson \u201cnevertheless moved to ban the state from investing in funds that utilize the marketers\u201d and directed the SIC and ERB to fire a company<\/a> at the center of one of the investment scandals plaguing state government.<\/p>\n

GOP: Guv\u2019s action \u2018too little, too late\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Republican Party of New Mexico<\/a> said in a news release that Richardson\u2019s attempt to restore confidence in state government in the face of the scandals is \u201ctoo little, too late\u201d because of the revelation that Correra profited from at least a third of all private equity investments made in the last three years by the ERB.<\/p>\n

Correra is the son of a Richardson confidant.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs head of the SIC, Governor Richardson surely was aware of the existence of third-party payments,\u201d Harvey Yates Jr., the GOP chairman, said in the release. \u201cLikewise, he surely was aware that his friend\u2019s son was collecting substantial finder\u2019s fees from companies vying to invest state funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor\u2019s 11th-hour attempt to exculpate himself by temporarily shutting down payments to third parties is remarkable,\u201d Yates said. \u201cRichardson owes the people of New Mexico an explanation as to why these third-party payments were necessary and what role these payments played in the SIC\u2019s decision-making process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yates called for Richardson to suspend or fire State Investment Officer Gary Bland<\/a>, appoint a committee to investigate and supervise the SIC and voluntarily relinquish his control over the SIC \u201cpending the results of an investigation into these payouts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Richardson\u2019s office says the governor wasn\u2019t aware of any fees investment companies doing business with the state paid to Marc Correra — or anyone else for that matter. \u201cThe state did not pay these fees, and the governor was not informed of any fees paid by private fund managers to third-party marketers,\u201d Richardson spokesman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}