{"id":8810,"date":"2009-11-02T11:23:33","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T17:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=8810"},"modified":"2009-11-16T22:08:36","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T05:08:36","slug":"article-details-cdr-housing-authority-bond-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/11\/article-details-cdr-housing-authority-bond-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing authority bond deal involved CDR"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Former

Former Region III Housing Authority Director Vincent "Smiley" Gallegos<\/p><\/div>\n

Bloomberg reporter delves deep into a bond deal involving players under indictment in separate scandals\u00a0<\/h4>\n

\u201cVincent \u2018Smiley\u2019 Gallegos, who ran a state housing agency out of an office next to a used-car lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, should have known better when he borrowed $27.7 million, the Internal Revenue Service said.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So begins the second<\/a> of two articles published today that are the result of months of investigation by Bloomberg\u2019s Elliot Blair Smith into CDR Financial Products<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Confused? Wondering if I\u2019m getting my New Mexico political scandals mixed up? I\u2019m not. This article involves both CDR \u2013 the company at the center of the now-defunct GRIPgate scandal<\/a> that cost Gov. Bill Richardson the U.S. commerce secretary post \u2013 and Gallegos \u2013 the man at the center of the state\u2019s housing authority scandal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CDR, the company\u2019s founder David Rubin and two other employees were indicted last week<\/a> in an unrelated probe into bid rigging in the nation\u2019s municipal bond market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gallegos and three others are currently under indictment<\/a> in the housing authority case. Gallegos and two others are facing felony charges including fraud and money laundering related to the misuse of bond money. A fourth defendant is charged with tampering with evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s reports by Smith don\u2019t deal directly with either scandal. Instead, they\u2019re an in-depth look at the way CDR has done business across the nation for some time. The second article focuses on more than $27 million in bonds the Region III Housing Authority in Albuquerque sold in 2003 \u201cwith the help of\u201d CDR.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time the authority issued the bonds, there was ample evidence that the program would not be successful,\u201d the IRS said after investigating the deal, according to Bloomberg. \u201cA prudent person would not have taken the same actions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thinking that\u2019s more of the same from an affordable housing agency that collapsed in 2006 after it defaulted on more than $5 million in bonds it owed the state? You\u2019re probably not the only one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From the Bloomberg article:<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo months later, federal tax authorities revoked the bonds\u2019 tax exemption. The IRS found that one of the agency\u2019s banks, Paris-based Societe Generale<\/a> SA, would earn as much as $1.5 million on a program for low-income and first-time homebuyers that lent only about $2.6 million. Tax authorities also found that CDR was collecting more than $50,000 a year from Societe Generale in fees not disclosed in public bond documents.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the context:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unraveling of Region III investments shows how municipal financing arranged in the dark costs as much as $6 billion a year through lack of disclosure, officials\u2019 mistakes and public corruption, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It also reveals how financial professionals may enrich themselves by taking advantage of a tax benefit worth $36 billion a year to state and local governments and non-profit agencies that borrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a lot of good stuff in this article, which you can read by clicking here<\/a>, and the other Smith report about CDR, which you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new, in-depth report into the embattled CDR Financial Products, Bloomberg details $27.7 million in bonds NM\u2019s Region III Housing Authority sold in 2003 \u201cwith the help of\u201d CDR.<\/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":[142,122,152,114,107],"class_list":["post-8810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-crime","tag-gripgate","tag-housing-authority-scandal","tag-public-corruption","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8810","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=8810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}