TPMMuckraker
Marc Correra: May 2009

Bill Richardson

Why Not To Get On Bill Richardson's Bad Side

Moe Tkacik | May 14, 2009, 2:14PM

The president is at a high school in New Mexico today attacking predatory financiers -- and, we imagine, silently thanking the deities his cabinet is not inhabited by a certain friend of predatory financiers accused of booking huge fees bilking the retirement funds of the state's school teachers. No, Bill Richardson is still in the governor's mansion, and he doesn't seem happy about it. On Monday we read that Richardson had actually "rolled his eyes" in response to a reporter's question about noted that he'd :

When asked recently if he had set the tone for his administration, which has been criticized for sometimes moving quickly on programs and for having a blind spot for details, Richardson rolled his eyes. The governor, who had just gotten into a black state SUV, didn't answer the question as the door closed and the vehicle drove off.

If Richardson does indeed set the tone for his administration, that tone has changed considerably of late. The expanding pension probes in New York have state officials suddenly taciturn -- after spending most of the year in hard-core attack mode.

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Bill Richardson, Frank Foy, Marc Correra, Vanderbilt Financial

Julio Ramirez

If Anyone Can Tell Us How This Massive Pension Conspiracy Worked, It's Probably Julio Ramirez

Moe Tkacik | May 13, 2009, 4:42PM

It looks like a major figure in the ever-expanding public pension fund scandal is cooperating with New York AG Andrew Cuomo's probe.

The player in question is Julio Ramirez, a former Los Angeles politico who until March worked for the tony boutique investment bank Blackstone. In the nineties, Ramirez managed one of former LA mayor Richard Riordan's campaigns and worked on various others. Yesterday Cuomo announced Ramirez had pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the scheme allegedly masterminded by Hank Morris, the former top adviser to Comptroller Alan Hevesi, along with David Loglisci, the chief investment officer of the New York general pension fund. Ramirez could be the key to unwinding the Western wings of what Cuomo yesterday called "a matrix of corruption - which grows more expansive and interconnected by the day."

The AG office says Ramirez got involved in the scheme in 2003 while he was working for two hedge funds on behalf of Wetherly Capital Group, a well-connected placement agency in LA. Morris, who effectively became the "gatekeeper" of pension investments after Hevesi won the 2002 comptroller election, promised to secure investments for Ramirez's clients if he gave him a 40% cut of his fees. Unbeknownst to the pension funds and money managers, Ramirez wired a cut of his fees into a shell company Morris incorporated called PB Placement. In a statement Wetherly president Dan Weinstein called Ramirez a "part-time employee who...dragged the firm into this controversy."

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Andrew Cuomo, Julio Ramirez, Marc Correra

Marc Correra

New Mexico: Richardson Pal Marc Correra Made $2 Million On "Toxic Waste" Teacher Pension Deal

Moe Tkacik | May 6, 2009, 2:35PM

Last week we introduced you to Marc Correra, a longtime ally of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who appointed his wife Claudia Correra in 2004 to be the state's first "international protocol officer." Last month Correra's name surfaced as the most successful in a list of dozens of "placement agents" paid by hedge funds and other money managers to secure investments in the state teachers' retirement fund; he was listed as having netted at least $11.5 million in fees for channeling around a billion dollars in pension investments to various money mangers -- including a controversial $90 million investment in a near-worthless "toxic waste" tranche of a subprime mortgage-backed CDO. The CDO, Vanderbilt Financial Trust, was put together by a Chicago firm called Vanderbilt Capital Group.

At the time the state said it did not know Correra's fee for the transaction, and his attorney strenuously denied his involvement whatsoever with Vanderbilt in the Albuquerque Journal:

"That did not happen," Bregman said Friday. "Marc Correra never received a fee for that transaction. He was not involved in that transaction in any way, shape or form."

But that's not what Vanderbilt told New Mexico, according to a document the state released yesterday.

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Bill Richardson, Marc Correra

Marc Correra

Marc Correra: The Link Between New York's Pension Scandal And "Toxic Waste" In New Mexico?

Moe Tkacik | May 1, 2009, 4:59PM

Three weeks ago we told you about accusations that the New Mexico State Investment Council had been under political pressure to invest teachers' retirement funds in risky investments like a $90 million "toxic waste" CDO backed by subprime mortgages -- and wondered if any of the other intensifying corruption investigations across the country might involve some of the same pay-for-players.

Sure enough, a few names emerged last week to link the New Mexico pension fund scandal to the alleged conspiracy to defraud the New York general pension fund under investigation by the state attorney general's office. One was Obama car czar Steve Rattner, who paid alleged ringleader Hank Morris more than a million dollars for securing investments in both states' pension funds. Morris was indicted in March for collecting $30 million in fraudulent "finder's fees" as a top adviser to the former state comptroller Alan Hevesi, in collusion with the pension fund's manager David Loglisci. But the indictment didn't address Morris's "placement" services in other states; his name turned up on a list of placement agents released by the New Mexico State Investment Council as the broker of a $20 million investment in Rattner's private equity firm Quadrangle.

The other thread running through both the New York and New Mexico pension funds was the advisory firm Aldus Equity, whose founder Saul Meyer was charged yesterday with participating in the New York conspiracy and which also until this week advised similar investments in New Mexico.

The further we looked, the wider and farther-back the suspicions of public pension fund pay-to-play seemed to extend, as Cuomo noted himself at yesterday's press conference: