I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Marc Correra, the son of a Richardson confidant, made more than $3 million – and possibly more – for his company on a half-dozen investment deals for the Educational Retirement Board (ERB), state documents released on Tuesday show.
The five-page document released by the ERB also suggests that Correra earned an additional $2 million on a controversial deal that cost the state $90 million in losses.
The deal in question involved $90 million in state investments by the Educational Retirement Board and the State Investment Council with Vanderbilt Financial Trust. Ultimately the state lost all the money it had invested with Vanderbilt, and those losses are at the center of a whistleblower suit filed last year by the ERB’s former investment officer.
Frank Foy has claimed a pay-to-play culture pervaded some of the state’s investment agencies, an allegation that the ERB and the State Investment Council and its officials have vigorously denied.
In the document, which details all ERB deals that incurred finders’ fees, the ERB noted that Vanderbilt is checking its records on who received a finders’ fee on the $90 million investment deal. But it went on to say that a Vanderbilt representative had told an agency employee that “Vanderbilt Capital Group paid Marc Correra $2 MM placement fee on the total $90 MM State of New Mexico investment.”
The money that Correra made in deals before the Education Retirement Board is in addition to up to $11 million he earned in finders’ fees from deals before the State Investment Council, according to a document released last month. It is unclear how much those fees were shared.
Correra is the son of Anthony Correra, a close friend of the governor.
Third-party agents – individuals who are paid the finders’ fees — are paid not by the state but by managers who try to interest the state, or any one of several agencies that make certain investments, to put money into their funds. In theory, those funds manage the state’s investment and earn it a return.
Scrutiny over finders’ fees here in New Mexico has come after a investment scandal exploded in New York last month only to reach deep into New Mexico’s practices as well.
A founder of Aldus Equity, the firm that advised New Mexico on some of its investments, is alleged to have helped the son of the then-New York state comptroller win a lucrative finder’s fee in exchange for increased business in that state. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged Aldus’ founder, Saul Meyer, with a fraud-related felony count last week.
Other figures who are prominent in the New York criminal probe have showed up in New Mexico state documents.
A document released last month by the New Mexico State Investment Council revealed that Henry “Hank” Morris, who has been indicted in the New York corruption scandal, received finder’s fees here in New Mexico.
Morris, a former aide to the New York comptroller, was among those indicted as investigators examine millions of dollars in payments that hedge funds and private equity firms paid to placement agents — often called third-party marketers — during the tenure of former Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
