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.
An executive producer of a film shot in New Mexico and titled “Chooch” pleaded guilty Wednesday to securities fraud in New York. David Loglisci is the former chief investment officer for New York state’s pension fund and the first official from that agency to plead guilty in an ongoing criminal pay-to-play inquiry that has netted six guilty pleas so far, according to the New York Times.
The inquiry in New York has multiple New Mexico ties, with last fall’s guilty plea by New Mexico’s former investment adviser, Saul Meyer of Aldus Equity, perhaps the biggest.
Meyer pleaded guilty to securities fraud last and admitted that on numerous occasions, contrary to his fiduciary duty to the state, his company had “recommended proposed investments that were pushed on him by politically-connected individuals in New Mexico.” Meyer went on to say in that statement he knew “that these politically-connected individuals or their associates stood to benefit financially or politically from the investments and that the investments were not necessarily in the best economic interest of New Mexico.”
Meyer’s admission and guilty plea was one of the factors that led members of the New Mexico State Investment Council to pressure New Mexico’s former State Investment Officer Gary Bland to resign. Bland resigned days after Meyer’s guilty plea.
But back to Loglisici. His role in the whole investment scandal is “a colorful one,” as the New York Times notes in its story today.
One of his brothers made a low-budget movie called “Chooch,” which the Albuquerque Journal’s Tom Cole wrote about almost a year ago. The movie featured, among other things, a nine-pound dachshund named Kiwi Limone. Several prominent investors seeking pension fund business (in New York) put money into the movie-making effort.
It’s unclear how, if at all, Loglisci might have been involved with New Mexico’s investment agencies.
But in pleading guilty Wednesday Loglisci said that he helped steer pension money to political contributors to former State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and to companies that paid kickbacks to Mr. Hevesi’s top political consultant, Hank Morris, according to the Times.
