Posted on 04/05/2013 4:09:02 PM PDT by Biggirl
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) It was the ultimate putdown of state lawmakers caught in the corruption spotlight. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said theyre not qualified to get real jobs.
The circus has returned to Albany.
(Excerpt) Read more at newyork.cbslocal.com ...
This is just my opinion mind you, but Bloomberg is Ringmaster of his own Circus.
Crazy gun laws, Soda’s that are too big, No salt on your French Fries.
Bloomberg has a lot of Chutzpah making fun of anyone
By the way, what real job has Bloomberg ever had?
As long as Neu Yawksters continue to elect a bunch of commie lib clowns, they going to have nothing but a circus for a government. Elections do have consequences. Something that the low information voter crowd hasn’t figured out yet.
Interesting.
I read that Bloomie wanted Hillary! to succeed him as MONYC but that was too small potatoes for her.
He’s just friggin’ filthy rich. He can buy all the power he wants.
Pot, Meet Kettle! New York’s only hope is if they lock them all in the statehouse and set fire to it! They would get rid of the cockroaches too!
For Shame... For Shame... whats'a matter with you? What do you have against cockaroaches?
He started as a boy from the middle class and made of fortune of billions of dollars. That sort of thing usually requires a substantial amount of work.
Napolean Doomberg is mad that Albany won’t grab guns and ban big slurpees.
FEDS LOOK CLOSER AT CASH SOURCE IN MCAULIFFE CAR SCAM
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by KENRIC WARD 4 Apr 2013 146 POST A COMMENT VIEW DISCUSSION
MCLEAN, Va. — A federal program that awards U.S. citizenship to foreigners in exchange for business investments is under increasing scrutiny as the assets of a Chicago company were frozen by the Securities and Exchange Commission
A Watchdog investigation found that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe and a brother of Hillary Clinton used a similar EB-5 operation to raise cash from foreigners in order to launch a new automobile manufacturing company. A financial adviser calls the McAuliffe operation a fraud.
While McAuliffe and Anthony Rodham dodged questions about their business, SEC officials last month shut down a Chicago financier on charges of defrauding more than 250 foreign investors.
The federal agents said Anshoo Sethi created A Chicago Convention Center (ACCC) and Intercontinental Regional Center Trust of Chicago, and fraudulently sold more than $145 million in securities and collected $11 million in administrative fees from investors, primarily from China.
According to the SEC, Sethi and his companies duped investors into believing that by purchasing interests in ACCC, they would be financing construction of the World’s First Zero Carbon Emission Platinum LEED certified hotel and conference center near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
Investors were misled by Sethi’s regional center to believe their investments were purchasing U.S. citizenship through the EB-5 immigrant investor program, the SEC said.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has approved 226 regional centers to serve as conduits for EB-5 investments. USCIS says that since the program’s inception in 1990, the centers have attracted $6.8 billion in foreign funds to create 49,000 U.S. jobs.
But as Watchdog.org reported this week, EB-5 investments dont necessarily produce employment or success.
Officials in Mississippi say up to $20 million reputedly raised through the Rodham-led Gulf Coast Funds Management have yet to be delivered to GreenTech Automotive, an electric-car company founded by McAuliffe.
Rodham, one of Hillary Clintons brothers, is president and CEO of Gulf Coast. A group of political associates of Bill Clinton, including his former IRS commissioner, serve on its board of directors.
McAuliffe is a former chairman of theDemocratic National Committee and was a chief fund-raiser for Mrs. Clintons 2008 presidential bid.
A second regional center Virginia Center for Foreign Investment and Job Creation lists Rodham as its registered agent. Both EB-5 centers, and GreenTech, share the same address in McAuliffes adopted hometown of McLean, Va.
No officials at Gulf Coast, VCFIJC or GreenTech responded to Watchdogs multiple requests for interviews over the past two weeks.
GreenTech, which in 2010 announced plans to build an assembly plant in Tunica County, Miss., has not specified how many vehicles it has actually built or sold. The firm has issued just one press release this year, announcing a European distributor to handle a projected volume of 12,000 cars.
A Watchdog reporter on Tuesday went to the Tysons Boulevard address listed by GreenTech and Rodhams two regional centers as their headquarters. The doors were locked, the nameplate was stripped off, and the office was dark and empty. A phone call elicited another address at a nearby, less-prestigious building.
Tucked anonymously into a hallway corner like a broom closet, the new office is much smaller. The interior walls are adorned with a couple of pictures of McAuliffes MyCar and display the names: GreenTech Automotive and Gulf Coast Funds Management.
The office was occupied by a lone receptionist who curtly and repeatedly declared that no one was available to be interviewed.
This is a private company. I know nothing, said the woman who declined to give her name.Because the companies are private, the Virginia Department of Taxation said their financial records are exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.
But the Fairfax County Department of Tax Administration said neither regional center had yet paid its business license fees for 2013. GCFM was delinquent on its 2012 license, as well.
County tax director Kevin Greenlief said his staff was looking into the situation.Michael Gibson, managing partner with U.S. Advisors, which administers EB-5 investment ventures across the country, said GreenTechs funding program smacks of fraud.
More broadly, Eric Ruark, director of research at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told Watchdog: The main problem with the EB-5 program is the almost total lack of oversight by USCIS.
The regional centers, which are set up to facilitate the investment of EB-5 monies in domestic companies, are largely unregulated and there is little transparency about where the money has gone or how many jobs have been created. (See report here.)
Like GreenTechs EB-5 hook-up, the Chicago scheme was all show, and very little go.The SEC alleged that Sethi, 29, and his companies falsely boasted that all necessary building permits had been acquired and that several major hotel chains had signed on.Investigators found that Sethi and his associates had spent more than 90 percent of the administrative fees collected from investors, despite promises to return the money if visa applications were denied.
More than $2.5 million of the funds were directed to Sethis personal bank account in Hong Kong, the SEC said.According to USCIS, only four EB-5 regional centers have been shut down by the feds in the 23-year history of the program.
Amid rising criticism, USCIS denied more regional center applications in the past year. Some credit agency director Alejandro Mayorkas with tightening accountability over EB-5 and its regional fund collectors.
A government report shows that in fiscal 2012, USCIS approved 35 regional-center applications while rejecting 63. That reversed historic patterns. In 2011, 123 were approved and 58 were denied.
Yet critics have questioned EB-5s job-creation claims, which are calculated through a complex formula that includes indirect employment. David North of the enforcement-oriented Center for Immigration Studies says the formula was invented to meet the statutory requirement of creating 10 new jobs per $500,000 investment.
GreenTech, in its agreement with Mississippi, pledged to hire 350 full-time workers by the end of 2014. Neither the company, nor the two regional centers, have said how many employees are currently at the car company.
In 2005, the Government Accountability Office reported it could not determine how many jobs immigrant investors had established because of the way USCIS credits the number of jobs created by an investors business.
If there are non-EB-5 investors involved or the investment is part of a greater overall business expansion, USCIS credits the single EB-5 investor with the total of all jobs created even though many of the jobs are not the result of his portion of the investment, the GAO report stated.
“In one such example, USCIS credited a single immigrant investor with creating 1,143 jobs based on a $1.5 million investment.
Four years later, USCIS own ombudsman noted that long-standing concerns over abuse, misrepresentation and fraud led to prosecutions of immigration fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy against the principals and officers of one EB-5 investment business.
FAIRs Ruark says thats just the tip of a growing iceberg.The reaction by USCIS has been to more heavily promote the program, while ignoring the obvious fraud and abuse, he told Watchdog this week.
USCIS does not provide a center-by-center breakdown of jobs created, or the financial status of the 226 centers listed on its website. A disclaimer states that a regional centers appearance on the roster does not guarantee compliance with U.S. securities laws, or minimize or eliminate risk to the investor.
Rodhams Gulf Coast Funds Management, licensed by USCIS to serve targeted zones in Louisiana and Mississippi, boasts of covering the largest geographical area for a regional center in the United States. Its website touts McAuliffes GreenTech vehicle.
However, Gulf Coast, along with Rodhams Virginia Center for Foreign Investment and Job Creation, is headquartered in Northern Virginia.
VCFIJC, which was licensed last November, claims $100,000 in annual revenues, but the center has no website.
Immigration Daily, a newsletter that tracks EB-5 and other entry programs, reported last month that USCIS may be getting ready to issue Notices of Intent to Revoke to some regional centers within the coming few months.
Such NOIRs will likely be not just for inactivity, but will possibly include issues connected to securities compliance, the newsletter stated.
USCIS press secretary Christopher Bentley said the agency would not comment on speculation. But he provided data showing that EB-5 immigrants who fail to meet financial thresholds are dropped from the program.
Since the EB-5 program began, 4,895 immigrant investors received citizenship while 1,271 did not.And what happened to those 1,271?
It is our expectation that they will leave (the country), Bentley said, deferring further questions to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.
ICE did not respond to Watchdogs inquiries.
Ruark said, Foreigners can and do invest in the United States without the expectation of gaining permanent residency. In fact, the EB-5 has such a poor record of return on investment that it is probably the least best option for someone who is an informed foreign investor.
The high incidence of fraud and failed projects makes it likely that many foreign nationals have been bilked through participation in the EB-5 program. This is something our own government recognizes, yet fails to correct.
Sounds like bloomberg is running for the 2016 dem nomination, and preemptively knocking Cuomo out.
Either work or corruption and dirty dealings.
He’s the nagging mommy of all the New York morons who put him in office.
He created bond trading software, and expanded into other financial information distribution. My boss back in the early ‘80s banking met with him on business and was very impressed.
Bloomberg said theyre not qualified to get real jobs.Well, he's not wrong. :') Pot-kettle-black ping.
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