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Thursday, June 26, 2008
Friends of Obama: “Double-Duty” Allison Davis

http://rezkowatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/friends-of-obama-double-duty-allison.html

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“In July 2004, state pension board member Allison S. Davis voted to turn over as much as $100 million in state workers’ retirement cash to an investment management firm,” Chris Fusco, Dave McKinney and Tim Novak wrote June 26, 2008, in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Months after it won the lucrative deal at Davis’ urging,” the investment firm, RREEF America REIT II Inc., “agreed to pay the Chicago developer $30,000 a year to take a part-time post on its board of directors, even as Davis continued to serve on the Illinois State Board of Investment.”

“There were questions about the legality of the dual roles. According to Illinois law, ‘No member of the board shall have any interest in any brokerage fee, commission or other profit or gain arising out of any investment made by the board,’ [but] the state board got a legal opinion that Davis could hold both posts as long as he didn’t vote on any future state deals for RREEF, a real estate investment trust.”

*snip*

Obama, Rezko and Davis

On February 20, 2008, RezkoWatch reported that in 1993 Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) started working at Davis’s “small Chicago law firm”. In 1998, Davis left the firm to invest in convicted political fixer Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko’s “final government-subsidized, low-income housing project” and the deal was “handled by Davis’ former law firm.”

[Allison S. Davis is named as “Individual BB” in Tony Rezko’s court documents.]

Early Rezko political contributions made to Sen. Obama predate October 1998 letters Obama wrote on Rezko’s behalf to housing officials “in support of a proposed apartment building for senior citizens four blocks outside of his district,” a project overseen by Obama’s former boss, Allison S. Davis, who ran the project’s development company, New Kenwood LLC.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in June 2007 that together Rezko and Davis ran the project’s development company, New Kenwood LLC, with the “development open[ing] in 2002 and end[ing] up costing $14.6 million in taxpayer money, including $855,000 in development fees for New Kenwood.”

Obama helped Davis (and Rezko) get $1 million from charity in 2000

While the Kenwood project was on-going, Obama was serving as an Illinois State Senator, on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago charity, and still working for the law firm that represented Davis, his former boss and “a small contributor to Obama’s political campaign funds,” Tim Novak reported November 29, 2007, in the Chicago Sun-Times.

In 2000, Davis came to Obama “looking for money ... to help fund his plans to build housing for low-income Chicagoans,” Tim Novak wrote. Obama, who left the Woods Fund in 2002, agreed.

[Obama] voted with other directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago to invest $1 million with Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners L.P., a $17 million partnership that Davis still operates.

It’s not clear whether Obama told other board members of his ties to Davis, whose family would go on to donate more than $25,000 to Obama’s political campaigns, including his bid to be president of the United States.

“Let me get back to you on that,” Obama presidential campaign spokesman Bill Burton said when asked about that ... He never did.”

Novak wrote that the Woods Fund “has no records to show whether the board knew about Obama’s ties to Davis, said Woods Fund president Deborah Harrington. ... Under its agreement with Davis, Harrington said, the fund cannot disclose how Davis has spent the money. ... Davis declined to comment.”

Was this a direct political favor for Rezko?

Yes.

Although Novak reported that it was Obama’s former boss, Davis, who asked for Obama’s help, Davis was not asking on his own behalf. He was asking for Obama’s assistance in obtaining the money for the development company which he owned and operated jointly with Rezko. It was the company that benefitted from the funding, not just Davis.

See other RW articles on Allison S. Davis.

http://rezkowatch.blogspot.com/search/label/Allison%20S.%20Davis