Hevesi's Sons and Cronies Engulfed in Pension Fund Probe

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney David Soares   want to know whether Hevesi was granted favors by financial services firms in exchange for pension business (See  NY Comptroller Being Probed Over Conflict-of-Interest Activities ).

In particular, they are looking into whether a decision by the comptroller’s office to invest pension money in hedge fund Third Point Capital in 2005 was linked to the hedge fund’s decision to hire Hevesi’s son, Daniel, a few months later.

According to the Times, Daniel Hevesi promotes Third Point to institutional investors and owns a brokerage firm that operates out of Third Point’s office. However, it is not clear whether he garnered any profits from his link to the pension fund, the newspaper indicated.

Among the other avenues being explored by investigators include:

• The relationship between the Hevesi’s office when he was comptroller and eSpeed, a Manhattan-based company that processed trades, whose board included one of Hevesi’s former political consultants Hank Morris.
• Political contributions from investment firms and their executives to Hevesi’s younger son, Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, to see if contributions were made with a promise of getting pension business.

In November 2006, an attorney appointed by Governor George Pataki to sniff out the allegations against Hevesi released a report that essentially said there was enough evidence to charge Hevesi with “knowingly and intentionally violat(ing) New York’s public officer’s law.” (See Hevesi Missteps Could Trigger Removal – Eventually)

The state Ethics Commission also issued a report that suggested Hevesi misused state funds when he assigned a staffer to chauffeur his ailing wife from 2003 to 2006, charges to which he pleaded guilty in December.