The survey of the Rhode Island Retired Teachers’ Association was sent to 603 members and 247 members responded. This cohort was from age 58 to 96 and had 36 respondents living out of state.
6 questions were asked. We have eliminated question 2 and 3 as they were poorly worded.
Question 4 asked how they keep current with local and state news (Newspaper, Radio, Television)
Two remaining questions were:
Are you in favor of more open information from the RI State Treasurer about pension investments and fees? Yes or No
All 247 responded yes
Has the loss of the yearly COLA had a negative impact on your standard of living? Yes or No
230 responded yes
Is it important the RIRTA continue to investigate the RI Public Pension Fund for possible criminal mismanagement? Yes or No
Again, all 247 responded yes
Finally we asked “In a few sentences, please tell us how the new pension law (loss of COLA) has impacted your life.” Following are some of the comments:
Believed the COLA/pension was a guarantee-thought it would be wisely invested.
A sad ending (COLA loss) to a job I loved.
Rent goes up! Healthcare goes up! Check does not.
I am chipping at my savings to keep pace with rising taxes, insurance, goods, fees etc.
I have no hope that my pension alone (no COLA) will keep me financially viable.
Mentally for sure. Am I going to have enough money till the end? How long will I be able to stay in my house? All the same concerns I heard from my Mothers’ generation.
It is like living in Limbo and the future is scary.
I cannot be a consumer anymore. The bottom line is there is no expendable income to support out local businesses, charities and nothing for political contributions.
Have discussed with my wife the advantage of moving out of RI to a state that will not tax my pension.
I made my decision to retire based on the 3% COLA…..I don’t have the funds I thought I could count on.
The comfort level we anticipated for us through our elder years has been stolen from us.
There are over 20,000 of us suffering our own recession.
]]>There is.
The webpage Internet Archive has a fantastic device called the Wayback Machine that captures snapshots of pages every few days across the internet. With absolute ease, one can look at the campaign pages of candidates, movie websites that have gone extinct, or even the frontpage of a newspaper or magazine on a historic date, say, the Times on 9/12/01.
We present now a little jaunt down memory lane, the EngageRI webpage that foisted this scheme on an unsuspecting public.
–President & Co-Chairperson
Ed Cooney
Senior Vice President, Nortek, Inc.
–Vice President
Constance Pemmerl
Retired Financial Executive
–Secretary
Ted Long
Partner, Holland & Knight LLP
–Treasurer
John Galvin
Chief Financial Officer, Collette Vacations
-Paul J. Choquette, Jr.
Vice Chairman, Gilbane Inc.
-Susan Arnold
CEO and General Counsel, Rhode Island Association of REALTORS, Inc.
-Kas DeCarvalho
Partner, Fontaine, DeCarvalho & Bell LLP
-Bradford S. Dimeo
Dimeo Construction Company
-James Diossa
Councilman – Ward 4, Central Falls City Council
-Michael McMahon
Founding Partner, Pine Brook Road Partners
-Dan Sullivan
CEO and President, Collette Vacations
When the FBI, SEC, and US Attorney’s Office come looking to ask questions, they might do well to check in with these folks also.
]]>One of the figures that appears in this whole fracas is a man familiar to those who have paid attention to the less-publicized elements of that political machine unto itself known as the Clintons, one Marvin Rosen. Ted Seidle wrote in his letter to the federal authorities the following:
As noted in my first report, when asked by the SEC in 2009, ERSRI admitted that Fenway Partners Capital Fund III paid an influential intermediary, Marvin Rosen, of Diamond Edge Capital Partners $262,500 related to this investment and paid the firm a total of approximately $1 million related to four private equity investments. Mr. Rosen was a Democratic fundraiser linked to former President Bill Clinton whose firm earned millions in New York pension fund deals in 2005 and 2006 when Alan Hevesi was state controller. Fenway and Mr. Rosen were also was involved in a pay-to-play controversy related to the New Mexico state pension.
To delve into the history of Mr. Rosen is to journey into the dark underbelly of the Democratic Party, a party that has been co-opted and compromised by Wall Street since the days of Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaigns, if not earlier. Since the mid-1980’s, a brand of “New Democrats” has used the once-progressive mantle of the party to justify the adoption of neoliberal policies that a Reagan or Bush would only dream of trying to foist on the American public, be it “the era of Big Government is over” hollowing out of Welfare and other social safety net programs or “Tough on Crime” minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines. This cuts to the core of your standard DINO (Democrat In Name Only), be it Bill and Hillary Clinton or Gina Raimondo.
When one writes about Marvin Rosen, they must be cautious because of his tendency to sue over bad press. As such, what follows is copy from sources that have previously withstood the Rosen wrath. The first comes from the book Kentucky Fried Pensions by Chris Tobe, who kindly shared his materials with us to complete these stories. Tobe has been covering a similar pension scheme in the Bluegrass State and says the following:
The most colorful placement agent firm, hands down, is a small operation called Diamond Edge Capital Partners LLC led by Marvin Rosen. Eileen Kotecki, who was Al Gore’s and John Edwards’ main Presidential fundraiser, worked there for a time. [i] Glen Sergeon, a Diamond Edge partner and a former trustee of the New York Teachers’ Retirement Fund, collected around $5 million from private equity firms and hedge funds doing business with the Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS). Sergeon used the money to buy a lavish Fifth Avenue condo. [ii] Forbes reported that, in addition to Kentucky, Diamond Edge was involved in the New York pay for play scandal: “Diamond Edge Capital Partners is another firm that was paid–$6.8 million–by money managers for lining up work with New York. In 2008 Sergeon joined Diamond Edge, where he teamed up with Marvin Rosen, a company partner and the former Bill Clinton fundraiser who arranged Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers for big donors. Later that year Sergeon landed Diamond Edge its first business with Kentucky.” [iii] Rosen and another Diamond Edge partner, Marc Correra, are being sued for their role as placement agents in New Mexico. [iv] Marvin Rosen as late as 2013 has been disclosed as a placement agent in Rhode Island. Pro Football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann has also worked for Diamond Edge.
But the most colorful Diamond Edge partner was Kenneth Ira Starr, known as Hollywood’s Madoff. [v] Currently serving a seven-year prison term, Starr managed the money of celebrities like Al Pacino, Uma Thurman and Lauren Bacall. Starr engineered a $33 million Ponzi scheme to swindle his clients and to impress his much younger, ex-stripper wife, Diane Passage. [vi] He was featured on the CNBC television show “American Greed” which focused on his rip-off of Sylvester Stallone and his obsession with, and subsequent marriage to, a pole dancer. [vii]
[i] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=atwTqj6OjY7U How Pension Placement Agent Exploited Political Ties, Martin Braun & Gillian Wee: May 18, 2009
[ii] http://observer.com/2011/07/secret-agent-glen-sergeon-sells-in-the-village-buys-in-harlem/
[iii] http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0523/features-pensions-glen-sergeon-auditors-secret-agent_3.html
[iv] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=atwTqj6OjY7U
[v] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/03/ken-starr-hollywoods-mado_n_830918.html
[vi] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/03/ken-starr-hollywoods-mado_n_830918.html
[vii] http://www.cnbc.com/id/45554694
Of course, this begs the question what exactly is a placement agent?
Investopedia defines the term as “An intermediary who raises capital for investment funds. A placement agent can range in size from a small one-person independent firm to a large division of a global investment bank. Professional placement agents are required to be registered with the securities regulatory agency in their jurisdiction, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A placement agent operating in the U.S. must be registered as a broker or dealer.” When I discussed this with Tobe, he explained it as a job that has almost totally ceased to exist in the post-Citizens United era, but before then a placement agent functioned as a middle-man for big capital.
But that is only scratching the surface of Rosen’s history. Jeffrey St. Clair and the late Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch! also have covered Rosen in their multi-decade stories about the Clintons. Their story, titled Clinton and the Cuban Fixer, is an impressive read worth the time. They write:
Marvin Rosen cut his teeth in Democratic Party politics back in 1980 when he was the Florida coordinator of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s doomed effort to wrest the Democratic Party nomination from Jimmy Carter. Though Kennedy did badly, Rosen proved himself a whiz at beating the bushes for money. By 1984 he was the leading fundraiser for Fritz Mondale. In 1988 Rosen served as finance chairman of the Dukakis campaign and, during the cash-strapped days of Clinton’s 1992 bid, was personally solicited by Gov. Bill himself to raise money, and celebrated the inaugural victory in the company of the Clintons and the Gores. Seeking to capitalize on such a long investment in time and effort, Rosen opened a D.C. office for his law firm in 1993 and immediately hired Ron Brown’s son Michael to be his director of legislative affairs. He also recruited Ted Kennedy’s new wife, Victoria.
They go on to explore Rosen’s connections to the infamous Cuban exile community located around Miami and other parts of Florida. For those readers who are unfamiliar, this bunch has a rather checkered past, including hair-brained anti-Castro efforts that date back to the darker days of the Cold War along with a bevvy of good-old-fashioned corruption and pollution of the Florida Everglades.
Another Cockburn/St. Clair piece featuring Rosen, excerpted from their book Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils and titled All for Oil, Oil for One, explains the connections between Rosen and major fossil fuel corporations that have been looking to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and build a variety of pipelines across America, giving a great insight into why the Democrats are all in favor of the Burrillville natural gas plant despite sound science proving it would be a calamity.
ARCO [Atlantic Richfield Company]– the prime beneficiary of the new Alaskan oil bonanza–is one of the preeminent sponsors of the American political system. The oil giant maintains a hefty federal political action committee. In the 1996 election cycle, the ARCO PAC handed out more than $357,000. But this was only the beginning. Over the same period, ARCO pumped $1.25 million of soft money into the tanks of the Republican and Democratic national committees. The company contributed at least another $500,000 in state elections, where corporations can often give directly to candidates. At the time, Robert Healy was ARCO’s vice-president for governmental affairs. On October 25, 1995, Healy attended a White House coffee “klatsch” with Vice-President Al Gore and Marvin Rosen, finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. A few days before the session, Healy himself contributed $1,000 to the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign. But from July through December of 1995, largely under Healy’s direction, ARCO poured $125,000 into the coffers of the DNC. [Emphasis added]
Need more be said?
The late Christopher Hitchens, for all his drunken sliminess and apologias for the Bush presidencies, did have a moment in his career where he contributed something useful by publishing his pamphlet No One Left To Lie To. In that slim volume, issued in the midst of the Clinton impeachment fiasco, he laid out an explanation for the Clinton strategy of triangulation, a term coined by the right wing political consultant Dick Morris. Hitchens defined it as such in a Book TV interview on C-SPAN 2: “Triangulation is three-card monte… You steal the Republican Party’s program, adopt it for the Democratic Party, hope you can bring the Republican Party’s donors along with you, which you often can, then you are faced with the task of shoring up or reassuring your own constituency, and that is done by means of a sort of cheap and superficial political correctness.” It can be said without much argument that this can very well sum up the Raimondo ideology very well, a miasma of reactionary ideals covered up by a clever game of neoliberal identity politics that passes doing the bare minimum for women’s rights as feminism. This also goes for her pension policies that benefit Wall Street while robbing Main Street.
Of course, all these points also can be applied with no modification or rejoinder to Hillary Clinton.
The Raimondo pension scheme is just a test run of a larger agenda. If this is left to stand, it would clear the way for the privatization of Social Security and the total defenestration of the social safety net dating back to the New Deal years. Through a well-financed and insidious number of organizations including the Pew Charitable Trusts Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Blackstone Group, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, as well as many others, a cunning and manipulative campaign has been created to deceive the general public into believing that retired teachers, firefighters, librarians, and civil servants are costing the taxpayers exorbitant amounts of money while your friendly Wall Street banker is in need of charity. And at the center of it all is Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign is both financed by these crooks and soliciting the endorsements of unions from whose members the heist is being perpetrated against!
All this begs multiple questions. For example, where are the voices of Treasurer Seth Magaziner and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin in all of this? David Sirota argues in a report that “the crisis language around pensions is, unto itself, fraudulent“. What does this say about Gina Raimondo’s public statements and testimony made potentially under oath while the pension lawsuit was being litigated? Was she totally forthcoming when the SEC previously looked into these matters? Seidle writes in Rhode Island Public Pension Reform: Wall Streets License to Steal:
[T]he General Treasurers practice of withholding information and intentionally providing incomplete disclosures regarding ERSRIs investments results in: (1) misleading the public as to fundamental investment matters, such as the true costs and risks related to investing in hedge, private equity, and venture capital funds; (2) understating the investment expenses and risks related to ERSRI; and (3) misrepresenting the financial condition of the state of Rhode Island to investors… [A]n investigation by state or federal securities regulators would reveal intentional withholding of material information and misrepresentations regarding state pension costs. [Emphasis added]
This is a scandal in development that makes Operation Plunder Dome look like shoplifting penny candy from the corner store. There never was a pension crisis, just a public swindle. This whole notion of a crisis is a gigantic fraud. And not only are public sector retirees and employees paying for it, every single taxpayer in Rhode Island is being duped into shoveling piles of cash into Wall Street’s trough.
The first person to scrutinize is John Arnold, the ex-Enron trader who was able to send a nice donation to both the Raimondo and Obama campaigns at key moments. Consider this line from a webpage cataloging his nationwide rampage:
Arnold donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Engage RI, the PAC behind Raimondos campaign to cut benefits and move workers into a hybrid retirement system that includes a 401(k) component. The Arnold Foundation also helped finance a Brookings Institution report and an Urban Institute report trumpeting Raimondo’s pension cuts.
While Enron has gone down in history as having close ties with George W. Bush, complete with Ken Lay holding the classic Dubya appellation of “Kenny Boy”, this should not be surprising. For some years now, the Wall Street political donations have flowed into Democratic Party coffers whereas the Republicans depend on patronage from the fossil fuel industries. The reason Bush and Lay were buddies came down to the fact that Enron as a company operated in both worlds, trading in energy futures (which ended up being fraudulent in the long run), which combined the sale of commodities on an exchange floor like Wall Street with the generation of relationships to fuel corporations such as the ones the Bush family made their millions from.
David Sirota writes the following about Arnold:
According to CNN/Money, John Arnold is the second-youngest self-made multibillionaire in the United States. Only Mark Zuckerberg is younger and richer but thats not the only difference between the two. Whereas Zuckerberg made his fortune building a brand-new social media technology, Arnold made his the old fashioned way: through the kind of financial speculation that destroys economies, harms taxpayers and wrecks public pension funds… Underscoring the potential corruption surrounding the pension system, Siedle also reports that state pension officials became the target of pay-to-play allegations and a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry. Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute reports that the Pew/Arnold-backed pension system actually increases costs to state and local governments and taxpayers while making retirement incomes less secure. Specifically, because of the comparative inefficiencies of the defined contribution part of the states new hybrid pension plan, state taxpayers will be forced to make upwards of $15 million a year in additional contributions while providing a smaller benefit for the average full-career worker. [Emphasis added]
All this obviates a simple question, why?
The answer is relatively easy. The over-hyped Dodd-Frank Act and recession backlash has made the typical practice of bailing out the Too-Big-To-Fail banks untenable. After 2008, it is simply impossible to carry on with business as usual. There was the logical and sane option of breaking up the banks and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, the law dating back to the aftermath of the 1929 crash that segregated risky Wall Street investment from typical consumer depositor banking. But President Obama, who has always been up to his eyeballs in money from firms like Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, an outfit that makes Goldman seem like child’s play, could not do that. So instead, Wall Street had to find a new source of revenue.
And what is perhaps the most trustworthy reservoir of cash to be found in America? The pension funds! Consider this line from Dan Pedrotty of the American Federation of Teachers: “Today, nearly $4 trillion is held in defined-benefit pension funds in our country on behalf of American workers for their retirement.” KA-CHING!
As with any fishing expedition, first you create the bait. Arnold has financed a “pension crisis” narrative through traditionally-dispassionate, objective venues that the public trusts immensely. For example, there was the shady report put out by the Brookings Institute that raised alarm bells. Or there was the nonsense news he financed for broadcast by the PBS division out of New York. There are all kinds of instances where Arnold’s plot is being rolled out. But you do not need me to tell you, just watch this delightful animated short created by the good union folks at AFSCME:
This of course helps to explain the motivation of why these folks are into education and push the charter school agenda. Besides the fact that it would break a major pillar of the union movement that could theoretically help union drives in the businesses of the Waltons (Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club) or the Gateses (Microsoft), it generates tons of revenue that goes into the pockets of the Wall Street investment firms! Consider also this point raised in The Plot Against America’s Pensions by David Sirota:
Like President George W. Bushs proposal to radically alter Social Security, many of these plans would transform stable public pension funds into individualized accounts. They also most often reduce millions of Americans guaranteed retirement benefits. In many cases, they would also increase expenses for taxpayers and enrich Wall Street hedge fund managers…The goals of the plot against pensions are both straightforward and deceptive. On the surface, the primary objective is to convert traditional defined-benefit pension funds that guarantee retirement income into riskier, costlier schemes that reduce benefits and income guarantees, and subject taxpayers and millions of workers retirement funds to Enrons casino-style economics The bait-and-switch at work is simple: The plot forwards the illusion that state budget problems are driven by pension benefits rather than by the far more expensive and wasteful corporate subsidies that states have been doling out for years. That ends up 1) focusing state budget debates on benefit-slashing proposals and therefore 2) downplaying proposals that would raise revenue to shore up existing retirement systems. The result is that the Pew-Arnold initiative at once helps the rights ideological crusade against traditional pensions and helps billionaires and the business lobby preserve corporations huge state tax subsidies. [Emphasis added]
It is worthwhile here to consider in closing some verbiage from Ted Siedle’s 2013 forensic audit:
Rhode Island’s state pension fund fell victim to a Wall Street coup. It happened when Gina Raimondo, a venture capital manager with an uncertain investment track record of only a few yearsa principal in a firm that had been hired by the state to manage a paltry $5 million in pension assetsgot herself elected as the General Treasurer of the State of Rhode Island with the financial backing of out-of-state hedge fund managers. Raimondos new role endowed her with responsibility for overseeing the states entire $7 billion in pension assets. In short, the foxes (money managers) had taken over management of the hen-house (the pension).
Indeed.
Several weeks ago the Washington Post ran a story about the glories of Governor Gina Raimondo’s pension policy, a matter I wrote about for CounterPunch.
Since then, sources have shared with RI Future a 13-page letter dated December 8, 2015 sent by Edward “Ted” Seidle, President of Benchmark Financial Services to Elizabeth Rosato of the FBI’s White Collar and Complex Financial Crimes unit, LeeAnn Ghazil Gaunt of the SEC’s Municipal Securities and Public Pensions unit, and Stephen Dambruch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office – District of Rhode Island’s Criminal Division. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI said that they do not comment on potential or current investigations. The SEC has yet to get back.
[Editorial note: On the phone Seidle told RI Future editor Steve Ahlquist that he spoke to the agencies before sending the letter and that his concerns were met with a “good deal of interest.”]
Mr. Seidle has previously written about the Raimondo pension policy in Forbes:
Theres no prudent, disciplined investment program at work herejust a blatant Wall Street gorging, while simultaneously pruning state workers pension benefits. Its no surprise that some of Wall Streets wildest gamblers have backed her so-called pension reform efforts in the state legislature. Former Enron energy trader emerges as a leading advocate for prudent management of state worker pensions? Thats more than a little ironic.
Here’s the letter with all emphasis contained in the original and only minor formatting adjustments:
Re: Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association Request for Further Investigation and Prosecution of Potential Civil and Criminal Violations Related to the Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island
Dear Ladies and Gentleman,
Why have 40 percent of the assets of the tax-exempt Rhode Island state pension been invested offshore in high-cost, high-risk hedge and private equity funds that permit billionaire fund managers to avoid U.S. taxes and mystery investors to profit at the expense of the state pensionall in secrecy? Rhode Islanders want to know.
The Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association (RIRTA) has retained me to bring potential civil and criminal malfeasance related to the Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI) that I have investigated to your attention for both further investigation and prosecution and I am writing to you on RIRTA’s behalf. While RIRTA works to safeguard retirement benefits for Rhode Island educators, the potential violations of law discussed in this letter impact all stakeholders in ERSRI, including participants and taxpayers.
I am a former SEC attorney and the nations leading expert on pension forensics, having investigated over $1 trillion in retirement assets. Prior investigations include the pensions of the states of North Carolina, Kentucky and Alabama; the cities of Nashville, Jacksonville and Chattanooga; Shelby County, Tennessee and Town of Longboat Key, Florida; retirement plans of major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Caterpillar, Boeing, Edison, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Deere, Bechtel, ABB, Edison and US Airways; and asset managers handling retirement assets such as Fidelity, JP Morgan, Sanford Bernstein, and Banco Santander. [1] I train U.S. Department of Labor pension investigators around the country; have testified before the Senate Banking Committee regarding the mutual fund scandals and was a testifying expert in various Madoff litigations.
I write about my investigations for Forbes.com and was named as one of the 40 most influential people in the U.S. pension debate by Institutional Investor for both 2014 and 2015.
By way of background, I have completed two extensive investigations of the $7.4 billion ERSRI.
The first, entitled Rhode Island Pension Reform: Wall Streets License to Steal [2] was commissioned by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 94 (Rhode Islands largest public employee union representing more than 10,000 state, city, town and school department employees) and completed October 17, 2013.
The second, entitled Double Trouble: Wall Street Secrecy Conceals Preventable Pension Losses in Rhode Island [3] was made possible through donations by 350 individual crowdfunderswith no contribution by organized labor and completed June 5, 2015. A petition to have the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigate the potential violations of law related to ERSRI identified in the Double Trouble report posted on change.org by Concerned RI Taxpayers has been signed by 375 individuals to date. [4]
Each of these forensic investigations includes details regarding certain apparent civil and criminal violations of law by Wall Street investment managers and advisers managing or overseeing ERSRIs assetswrongdoing which I will discuss further below.
If I am correct in my analysisand I am confident that I amthe potential violations of law by asset managers and advisers handling the assets of the already seriously underfunded state pension identified in these reports likely represent the greatest threat to the financial well-being of Rhode Islanders in the states history.
At the outset it is paramount to note the following alarming facts:
In summary, at this pivotal moment when $1 trillion in public pension assets are at risk, it is crucial for taxpayers, public employees, regulators and law enforcement to pierce the veil of secrecy, examine the myriad forms of commonplace alternative industry wrongdoing, and craft an effective response to protect retirement funds set aside for government workers.
It is time to address whether alternative industry malfeasance may be criminally, as well as civilly actionable when public pensions, such as ERSRI, are harmed.
Bear in mind that ERSRI stakeholders are, at this time, five years into a ten year looting (since alternatives typically involve a ten-year commitment) and already an estimated $2 billion has been lost in Rhode Island.
Below are specific examples of potential violations of law which were identified in the two forensic investigations of ERSRI.
In conclusion, the evidence of pervasive wrongdoing involving alternative investments held in the portfolios of pensions established for state and local government workers nationally, including ERSRI, is overwhelming. The malfeasance evident in ERSRIs alternative investments is harmful to the already severely underfunded pension.
The so-called reform of ERSRI involving heavy use of alternative investment funds engaged in practices unsuitable or illegal for the pension is doomed to continue to fail. Five years into a ten-year looting, already an estimated $2 billion has been lost in Rhode Island. It is not too late to act to protect the retirement savings of state and local government workers of modest means.
At this pivotal moment when $1 trillion in public pension assets are at risk nationally, regulators and law enforcement must pierce the veil of secrecy, examine the myriad forms of commonplace alternative industry wrongdoing, and craft an effective response to protect government workers retirement securitybefore the ten-year looting cycle has been completed.
It is time to address whether alternative industry malfeasance may be criminally, as well as civilly actionable when public pensions, such as ERSRI, are harmed.
I am available to answer any questions you may have and provide any assistance. Please do not hesitate to call me.
Edward Ted Siedle
President
[1] Findings of certain of these forensic investigations have been made public and can be viewed at my company website, www.investigatemyretirementplan.com.
[2] http://www.scribd.com/doc/176896709/Rhode-Island-Public-Pension-Reform-Wall-Street-s-License-to-Steal
[3] http://files.golocalprov.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Double%20Trouble%20FINAL.pdf
[4] https://www.change.org/p/u-s-securities-and-exchange-commission-investigate-potential-violations-of-the-rhode-island-8-billion-state-pension-fund
[5] http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2015/11/20/rhode-island-retired-teachers-association-turning-up- the-heat-on-pension-looting/
[6] Page 51.
[7] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-07/bogus-private-equity-fees-said-found-at-200-firms-by-sec
[8] How Fair are the Valuations of Private Equity Funds? http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2229547
[9] http://www.pionline.com/article/20150330/ONLINE/150339990/sec-charges-private-equity-firm-patriarch-ceo- with-improper-valuation
[10] https://people.hofstra.edu/Daniel_J_Greenwood/pdf/Looting.pdf
[11] http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20140224/NEWS/302249995
[12] http://wpri.com/2014/10/15/arnold-donates-another-100k-to-pro-raimondo-super-pac/
[13] http://www.forbes.com/sites/trangho/2015/05/09/why-hedge-funds-love-to-go-offshore/
[14] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-fenway-idUSKCN0SS22620151103#GZTKQVh88ckmZo8f.97
[15] http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/1673090/blackstone-tpg-capital-disclosefees-under-
pressure-us-sec
[16] http://www.wsj.com/articles/fees-get-leaner-on-private-equity-1419809350?cb=logged0.46937971841543913
[17] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/bill-clinton-pal-earned-huge-pension-fees-marvin-rosen-firm-millions- hevesi-reign-article-1.361953
[18] http://watchdog.org/15168/nm-gary-bland-trouble-for-the-sics-pay-to-play-lawsuit/
[19] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/nyregion/15carlyle.html
[20] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/business/retirement/behind-private-equityscurtain.html?_r=0