PENSION $TINK HAS ANOTHER LINK

Monday, August 27, 2007
KENNETH LOVETT, New York Post,

ALBANY - A Texas-based hedge fund that received $100 million in New York state pension investments paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in "referral fees" as part of the deal to a company tied to former Comptroller Alan Hevesi's top consultant, The Post has learned. At the time it was seeking to do business with New York's $150 billion pension fund, Hunt Financial Ventures of Dallas was told to contact Hevesi's political guru, Hank Morris, according to the hedge fund's lawyer, Bill Brewer.

The man responsible for steering the hedge fund to Morris was former City Council President Andrew Stein, who now works as a business consultant, Brewer said.

Brewer told The Post that Morris, in turn, instructed Hunt to pay the referral fees to certain companies.

The outfit collecting the fees now is Searle & Co., a small Greenwich, Conn., financial-services firm located above a Christian Science reading room. Searle is headed by Robert Searle, a longtime personal friend of Morris.

The fees paid to Searle are based on a percentage of the hedge fund's return on the pension investment and a slice of what Hunt charges for fund management.

Investigators have described Morris as "associated" with the Searle firm and believe he received the lion's share of the pension-related referral fees paid to the company by entities that received large investments from the pension fund.

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Posted by Tracey on 08/27/07 at 02:09 PM • (0) Comments

Tags: corruption, alan hevesi, hank morris, david loglisci, state pension, morris,