Cuomo Widens Pension Probe
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is expanding his public pension investigation to include lobbyists and law firms who have may used their influence to win investments through the state’s massive pension fund.
Cuomo told reporters this morning that his office has issued more than 100 subpoenas to investment firms and their agents to determine if agents doing business with the pension fund were unlicensed and unregistered.
About 40 percent to 50 percent of the placement agents used by the state and New York City pension systems are unregistered as securities brokers, Cuomo estimated.
“This investigation I believe is pointing to a systemic weakness in the system, which is the pervasive use of unregistered agents,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said without registration as a broker through the federal government,”you could just be walking into the comptroller’s office, in my opinion, selling access to the comptroller’s office to a private company.”
For two years, Cuomo’s office has been investigating the investments of the state’s $120 billion public-employee pension fund, which is under the sole control of the state comptroller.
Cuomo has already charged five investors and politically connected people, including former Liberal Party Chairman Raymond Harding and former Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s political consultant Hank Morris. Combined, they are accused of receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from companies who received investments with the pension fund.
Cuomo said his probe is broadening to other states and later today will be holding a conference call with investigators in other states. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating.
Current Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli recently banned the use of placement agents, or middlemen, connected to the state’s pension fund. But Cuomo said loopholes could still exist.
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In the end, Cuomo gets a lot of pub, a few regulations are juggled, and everyone who, through political contacts, ran away with million and millions gets to snicker-off and go spend it. And the next generation of politicians and thieves (not mutually exclusive) is inconvenienced in having to spend a little time finding ways to get around any new regulations which will (intentionally) open up a new set of arcane loopholes so that no one ever goes to jail and can, when finally caught in “ethical lapses.” take the new stolen millions, snicker-off and go spend it. And then, the public, in its infinite ignorance as to how the game is played, crowns a new hero who, in effect, accomplished nothing, and at the end of the sordid story, anoints him the new Governor.
WOW—- ANDY’lil-mafioso-in-training’CUOMO makes some half-hearted rumblings about those ‘DARN LOBBYISTS + CORRUPTION + HOW THEY ENRICHED THEMSELVES’ at youse poor suckers expense – MUST BE ELEKTSHUN/NOMINATION TIME FOR THE DEMBHOLES AGAIN??? Is ‘lil-mafioso-in-training’CUOMO looking to be a SENATURD or GOVERNOR of NewYork??? Too bad he could never find E – L – I – O – T using/abusing those ‘PROS-TEE-TOOT-EES’ when he supposedly investigated and found nothing!!! Does/can a DEMBHOLE AG ever find other perverse/illegal/salacious acshuns of another DEMBHOLE when it’s not elekshun/nomination season??? Don’t know – let’s axsk(ebonics spellung) former VP candidate and SENATURD JOHN EDWARDS – who likes to ‘drill’ only his video assistants for more energy!!! Ha.
And, as for John Edwards, like so many of the rest of them, he has shown himself to be a coiffured posing little twerp who is not only a self-important hypocrite, but is one of the worst kind in that he actually used his cuckolded wife’s illness as a means of sympathy for his noble self in the interest of promoting his political career. Question for Dr. Freud,et al: Is there something inherently ingrained by different (large) degrees, but still palpably ingrained, in people who choose certain fields (preacher, politician, Wall St. Exec., etc.) that predisposes them to thievery, hyper self-aggrandizement, hypocrisy and trickery? If not, and it is just the human condition, we are all kidding ourselves into thinking that we are not doomed as a species.