Ohio treasurer Boyce under fire for hiring “crooked” bank to manage state pension programs
CAROL GREENBERG | Conservative Outlooks
AUGUST 21, 2010
Ohio state treasurer Kevin Boyce is under fire for recently hiring Boston’s State Street Corp. to manage portions of several of Ohio’s state pension programs. State Street is facing fraud allegations in California and Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a lawsuit demanding $200 million in compensation for “raiding” state pension plans there. According to the New York Times Brown stated:
“State Street bankers committed unconscionable fraud by misappropriating millions of dollars that rightfully belonged to California’s public pension funds,” said Jerry Brown, the California attorney general. “This is just the latest example of how clever financial traders violate laws and rip off the public trust.”
Boyce was well aware of the fraud allegations as he hired State Street five months after California’s lawsuit was filed. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer California’s state treasurer Bill Lockyer went as far as calling State Street “crooks”:
“I’m just not sure that we ought to be doing business with them given that circumstance,” Lockyer said, according to a transcript of the Feb. 16 CalPERS board meeting. “But if we don’t have any choice…I guess we do business with crooks.”
Lockyer’s statement came after he was advised by staff members of CAIPers, one of the CA pension programs State Street was accused of defrauding, the bank’s contract needed to be renewed and there was no time to launch a bidding process for a replacement.
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