{"id":8262,"date":"2009-10-21T18:08:06","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T00:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=8262"},"modified":"2009-11-16T22:08:36","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T05:08:36","slug":"state-investment-officer-resigns-amid-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/10\/state-investment-officer-resigns-amid-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"State investment officer resigns amid scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gary

Gary Bland<\/p><\/div>\n

The state\u2019s top investment officer has resigned amid a pay-to-play scandal that\u2019s the subject of federal and state criminal investigations.<\/p>\n

Gary Bland<\/a> resigned Wednesday in a letter to Gov. Bill Richardson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wollmann would confirm that an Associated Press article<\/a> about the letter was accurate. According to that article, Bland\u2019s letter states that he is \u201csaddened and disappointed\u201d to leave the job, but does not explain why he\u2019s resigning.<\/p>\n

The Albuquerque Journal<\/a> reported it had learned that the SIC had planned to meet in emergency session Thursday morning \u201cfor a possible vote of no confidence in Bland.\u201d The newspaper said the governor plans to start the process of naming a replacement.<\/p>\n

The investment scandal<\/h3>\n

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<\/a> in New York earlier this month to felony charges related to a kickback scheme that reaches all the way to New Mexico.<\/p>\n

In pleading guilty, Meyer admitted to recommending \u201cinvestments that were pushed on him by politically-connected individuals in New Mexico\u201d while Aldus was the investment adviser to New Mexico\u2019s SIC and Educational Retirement Board<\/a>, according to a New York attorney general news release<\/a> announcing Meyer\u2019s guilty plea.<\/p>\n

The individuals in New Mexico Meyer spoke of haven\u2019t been named publicly. The Journal reported this weekend, in a separate article<\/a>, that Meyer had agreed as part of his plea bargain to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in New Mexico in its investigation here.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/a> in 2006.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The criminal complaint, quoting records obtained by the New York AG, states that, in May 2006, Daniel Hevesi thanked Meyer \u201cfor NM.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Marc Correra one of the \u2018politically-connected individuals?\u2019<\/h3>\n

Both N.M. Attorney General Gary King<\/a> and federal agents<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s been widespread speculation that Meyer might have been referring, when he spoke of \u201cpolitically-connected individuals in New Mexico,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s office has said Richardson never had contact with Meyer<\/a>, and has previously said the governor never talked to Correra about state investments. Correra\u2019s attorney, Sam Bregman, has said his client has committed no crime.<\/p>\n

Bland\u2019s role in shining light on housing authority scandal<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that the Journal and I have written articles recognizing that Bland, as I put it in July<\/a>, \u201cdeserves credit for standing up against shenanigans<\/a> in the state\u2019s housing authority system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Journal\u2019s Thomas Cole<\/a> wrote that Bland \u201ckept the public light shining on the (Region III Housing Authority) when others would have preferred it be turned off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state\u2019s top investment officer, Gary Bland, resigned Wednesday in a letter to Gov. Bill Richardson. His resignation comes in the middle of a pay-to-play scandal involving state investments that\u2019s the subject of federal and state criminal investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[142,152,123,107],"class_list":["post-8262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-crime","tag-housing-authority-scandal","tag-investment-scandal","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262","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=8262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}