A real estate venture created by President Barack Obama’s onetime boss and a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley squandered $68 million it was given to invest on behalf of pension plans for Chicago teachers, cops, city employees and transit workers, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.No word yet from Barack Obama on this story. We are sure Barack Obama knows who Allison Davis is!
The five public pension funds haven’t made a dime on the investments they made nearly a decade ago with DV Urban Realty Partners, a company created by Obama’s ex-boss Allison S. Davis and Daley nephew Robert G. Vanecko, records show.
In fact, the financially troubled pension plans have lost most of the money they gave DV Urban, which used the money to invest in risky real estate deals, primarily in neglected neighborhoods.
It invested in eight real estate deals that, for the most part, had gone belly up by Dec. 31, 2015, when the investment deals with the Chicago pension plans expired.
Though the pension funds lost out, DV Urban and its affiliated companies got about $9 million of the pension money for management fees. And they were in line for more until pension officials, facing losses, got a court order in 2012 to remove Davis and Vanecko from managing the retirement investments.
Following the sale of two properties last year, the pension funds recovered $6 million of their original investments — but $293,716 of that went to DV Urban, which had also invested some of its own money in the real estate deals.
The pension funds are still hoping to recover more money this year by liquidating the final two properties in DV Urban’s portfolio: a Lakeview lot on which a Mariano’s supermarket is under construction and a few storefronts at 3508 S. State St., former site of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Stateway Gardens housing project.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Pension funds lost millions on deals with Daley nephew, Obama pal
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
