Chicago Teacher Pension Money Invested With Rahm Emanuel's Friends and Donors

International Business Times reports:

It is the kind of transaction Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s much-touted ethics reforms appeared designed to halt: Chicago teachers’ pension money flowed to financial companies connected to some of the mayor’s friends and top donors. Emanuel, whose administration appoints some members of the teachers’ pension-fund board, received campaign cash from those same financial firms despite his own 2011 executive order purportedly preventing donors from receiving city business.

“When Mayor Emanuel took office, he said he was going to stop the culture of pay-to-play,” said Alderman Scott Waguespack, who is among a group of lawmakers asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether the donations also violated that agency’s anti-corruption rule. “This is an example of his failure to follow through on those promises.”

Emanuel’s office declined an International Business Times request for comment.

According to city documents obtained by IBTimes, the firm affiliated with Illinois’ Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner -- a longtime friend of Chicago’s Democratic mayor -- as well as executives at private-equity giant Madison Dearborn have gained substantial investments from the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund (CTPF) since Emanuel took office. The documents also show the CTPF has an indirect equity stake in Grosvenor Capital Management. Executives at the latter two firms have donated nearly $1.8 million to Emanuel’s campaign and political organizations since 2011.

The great moments of Illinois politics!