GRIPgate

Political scandals, former elected officials getting indicted, electoral surprises and an occasional David toppling a Goliath–2009 had it all.

“Vincent ‘Smiley’ 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.”
So begins the second of two articles published today that are the result of months of investigation by Bloomberg’s Elliot [...]

CDR Financial Products, the company that was at the center of New Mexico’s GRIPgate scandal that recently ended without charges being filed, was indicted along with some of its employees today in a national probe into bid rigging in the municipal bond market.

I talked by phone with the hosts of the FOX Business TV show Happy Hour on Thursday about the news that Gov. Bill Richardson and others won’t face criminal charges following a probe into pay-to-play allegations. Watch it here:

Despite Gov. Bill Richardson’s claims of vindication, over the weekend several state newspapers ran editorials about the two-term Democratic governor and the end of a federal probe into whether there was pay-to-play involved in deals at the New Mexico Finance Authority.
“No indictments, but heavy stench in state deals,” was the headline of an editorial written by [...]

In a letter sent to witnesses before the grand jury investigating accusations of pay to play in Gov. Richardson’s administration, United States attorney, Gregory J. Fouratt said that while criminal charges weren’t forthcoming, “pressure from the governor’s office resulted in the corruption of the procurement process” and that the letter “should not be interpreted as exoneration of any party’s conduct in that matter, the New York Times reported late Thursday night.

Gov. Bill Richardson and “former high-ranking members of his administration” won’t be charged following the federal investigation into allegations of pay-to-play in his administration, the Associated Press is reporting today. “It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington,” the AP quoted an unnamed source as saying.

A lawyer for whistleblower Frank Foy has asked a state judge to hold Amanda Cooper — Gov. Bill Richardson’s former deputy presidential campaign chair — in contempt of court. At the heart of a motion filed Tuesday is a contention that Cooper hasn’t turned over subpoenaed records.

So far the New Mexico Finance Authority has refused to make public the subpoena the agency has received from federal prosecutors as part of an ongoing federal investigation into allegations of pay-to-play government.

The New Mexico Finance Authority has asked the office of Attorney General Gary King to look into trying to recover millions of dollars lost in a deal at the center of a federal pay-to-play investigation, the authority’s chairman said yesterday.

So how does Stephen Flance, the chairman of the New Mexico Finance Authority, know that the FBI has completed its investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the state agency’s deals?
Flance told state lawmakers that the FBI had completed its investigation and that the findings were with the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in Washington. Flance [...]

The chairman of the state agency at the center of a federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations against Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration said today that the investigation is complete and has been forwarded to the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dodged questions Friday on the active pay-to-play investigation involving the New Mexico Mortgage Authority.

Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday refused to answer whether he had met to discuss an investment with the son of a friend prior to the state’s decision to sink $90 million into the deal. An attorney for Marc Correra, the son of the governor’s friend and the individual marketing the investment in question, also declined to say whether the two men had met prior to the state’s investment.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed documents related to the state’s pending shift from a contract with one behavioral health services company to another, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting.
The state’s Human Services Department has until next week to respond to the subpoena, which seeks “any and all documents, to include but not limited to specifications, [...]