Chicago pension funds could lose $1 million in deal with Daley nephew

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The historic, now boarded-up building that once housed the Chicago Defender newspaper is in foreclosure, and, as a result of that, five of the city’s struggling pension funds could end up losing $1 million.

A failed plan to rehabilitate the Art Deco/Moderne building was one of the deals put together by former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew, Robert G. Vanecko, and his politically connected partner, Allison S. Davis, in a start-up real estate investment company that five city pension funds hired in 2006 to manage $68 million in retirement money for teachers, police officers, CTA employees and other city workers.

About a year after they were hired to manage the pension money, Vanecko and Davis joined politically connected restaurateur Matthew A. O’Malley and his partner, Brian O’Connell, in a deal to buy and rehab the shuttered building at 2400 S. Michigan that last housed the Defender, the city’s largest black-owned newspaper.

No word yet from Vanecko's Uncle William Daley or Barack Obama on this one.