New Mexico Education Pension Chief Resigns After $350,000 Loan Revealed
The chairman of New Mexico’s $8.2 billion pension fund for teachers resigned after a disclosure that he borrowed $350,000 from the father of a man who shared in as much as $22 million in finder’s fees from state investments.
Bruce Malott, an Albuquerque accountant, resigned from the Educational Retirement Board yesterday, said Jan Goodwin, a fund spokeswoman. The Albuquerque Journal reported today that Malott received a loan in 2006 from Anthony Correra, a political donor to Governor Bill Richardson.
Malott, a former campaign treasurer for Richardson, used the money to pay $290,000 in federal taxes and $50,000 in state taxes that he owed after the U.S. Internal Revenue Service determined that a limited-liability company set up by him and others was used to avoid taxes, the newspaper said.
Malott told the Journal that when he obtained the loan, he didn’t know Correra’s son, Marc, was getting paid by money managers to help them win business with the teachers’ pension fund and the State Investment Council, which manages $13.5 billion in New Mexico’s endowment funds.
Barry Bitzer, a spokesman for Malott, said the accountant resigned because he was tired of “adverse publicity” related to federal investigations of the fund and the investment council.
Marc Correra shared in about $4 million of payments related to investments by the Educational Retirement Board, Goodwin said.
Two-Sentence Letter
Malott, who served on the board of the teachers’ pension fund for 11 years, didn’t provide the reason for his resignation in a two-sentence letter to Richardson, a Democrat.
Gilbert Gallegos, a Richardson spokesman, said by e-mail that the governor didn’t know about Correra’s loan to Malott and that he had accepted Malott’s resignation.
Anthony Correra served on the board of Moving America Forward Foundation Inc. a non-profit group set up by Richardson, a 2004 presidential aspirant, to register Hispanic and American Indian voters.
Anthony Correra and Sandia Asset Management, an investment management firm he ran, contributed more than $27,000 to Richardson’s 2002 campaign for governor, according to campaign finance records compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, in Helena, Montana.
To contact the reporter on this story: Martin Z. Braun in New York at mbraun6@bloomberg.net.
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