{"id":4662,"date":"2009-06-18T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-18T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/third-party-marketers-were-on-someones-radar\/"},"modified":"2009-06-18T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-18T06:01:00","slug":"third-party-marketers-were-on-someones-radar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/06\/third-party-marketers-were-on-someones-radar\/","title":{"rendered":"Third-party marketers were on someone&#8217;s radar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">Haven\u2019t state officials repeatedly said in the midst of the current investment scandal that the fees being paid to third-party marketers who helped companies win state investment contracts weren\u2019t on their radar?<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">They have said that. In fact, Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for Gov. <a href=\"http:\/\/governor.state.nm.us\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Richardson<\/a>, said this last month:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">\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 Gallegos <a href=\"http:\/\/haussamen.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/guv-says-he-didnt-know-about-payments.html\">told me<\/a>. \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<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">Other officials have been quoted in the <a href=\"http:\/\/newmexicoindependent.com\/27300\/seeking-answers-on-finders-fee-windfalls\" target=\"_blank\">New Mexico Independent<\/a> about the topic as well:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201c\u2018Until recently a review of a fund was about quality of the investment. Placement agents was not the first thing on the list,\u2019 said Bob Jacksha, chief investment officer for the Educational Retirement Board.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cAdded State Investment Officer Gary Bland: \u2018Until this issue arose in New York, none of us was concerned. We had no reason to be concerned.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">They\u2019re referring, of course, to the pay-to-play investment scandal that began in New York and has spread to a number of other states, the most prominent being New Mexico. It\u2019s in the context of their comments that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/upfront\/17221271210upfront06-17-09.htm\" target=\"_blank\">an article<\/a> published Wednesday in the Albuquerque Journal is so interesting. From the Journal:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cMaybe they didn\u2019t want to know who was making all that money. Maybe they didn\u2019t care. Maybe they didn\u2019t want you to know who was cashing in. Maybe it was just an innocent oversight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cWhatever.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cThe bottom line is this: In the wake of a corruption scandal at the state Treasurer\u2019s Office in 2005, a policy was drafted that called for public disclosure of fees paid to so-called third-party marketers on government investment deals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cA document that became known as the \u2018Governor\u2019s Transparency Policy\u2019 &#8212; put together for Gov. Bill Richardson &#8212; recommended disclosure of all the fees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cThat didn\u2019t happen. The policy was never adopted, not even by the State Investment Council, which Richardson chairs and controls.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">Could we have known about all the potential shenanigans years earlier? Could state officials have helped expose and change a shady practice and avoided the current controversy? <\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\" class=\"MsoNormal\">Maybe we\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Haven\u2019t state officials repeatedly said in the midst of the current investment scandal that the fees being paid to third-party marketers who helped companies win state investment contracts weren\u2019t on their radar? They have said that. In fact, Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson, said this last month: \u201cThe state did not pay [&hellip;]<\/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-4662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662","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=4662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}