The New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring pay-to-play whistleblower Frank Foy is about to start. Check back here and at the New Mexico Independent's
for updates throughout.
In the meantime,
on the essentials of Foy's case.
Update 2:24 pm
: As much as $200 million may have been at stake in the pay-to-pay allegations brought by Foy.
Foy has taken at seat and his attorney, Victor Marshall, is speaking now.
2:36 pm
: Marshall: "we are now estimating that the total losses on all those Vanderbilt investments [by the Educational Retirement Board] are around $286 million."
2:42 pm
: Foy's case has been delayed, Marshall says, because it sits before First Judicial District Judge Stephen Pfeffer, whose fully booked criminal docket takes precedence.
"If we had gotten the documents we'd asked for last January, we think Gary Bland would've been gone a long time ago," Marshall says.
Update 2:52pm
: Marshall says a court hearing would resolve some of these issues--and funding for the state Attorney General would help, too.
Marshall paintied a picture of a nationwide web of public fund corruption that benefits some of the same financial institutions--"like Bear Stearns," Marshall says--that whose bets on mortgage-backed securities helped cause the economic crisis.
Update 2:57 pm
: "I think you're a hero," Sen. John Ryan, R-Bernalillo, tells Foy. "I'd like to see our government get on the side of you and the people."
Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Bernalillo, says some people think the Educational Retirement Board may not have known about the kickbacks, technically known as "third-party payments."
McSorley also floats a conspiracy theory that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had an "exposure problem" (i.e., his prostitute), because he was ready to expose corrupt practices at Wall Street investment firms.
Update 3:06 pm
: Marshall says New Mexico taxpayers' money was "skimmed and used to pay bribes in New York."
Update 3:10 pm
: Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, addresses the delay at the local district court. "We're short three judges," Wirth says. "Judge Pfeffer is the criminal judge, and the reality is you can't get a civil sitting on anything."
My battery's dying. This could be the last post until later.
