State sues owner of NFL’s Chiefs in investment scandal
Suit revolves around $300 million allegedly secured through Richardson insiders
The owner of the Kansas City Chiefs struck a pay-to-play deal with former Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration, the State Investment Council alleges in a new lawsuit, claiming the billionaire NFL scion secured hundreds of millions in state investment money by leaning on Richardson insiders Anthony and Marc Correra.
The father and son are at the heart of a massive Richardson administration investment scandal that continues to shake out almost eight years after Richardson left office. Richardson and the Correras have denied any wrongdoing, though Marc Correra, who filed for bankruptcy last year, has admitted he received about $20 million in fees from fund managers and others doing business with the State Investment Council.
The council, responsible for managing $21.5 billion in public trust funds, claims Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, 52, was able to secure $300 million in investments for a hedge fund in which he was a partner by using the Correras’ influence with former state investment officer Gary Bland.
The lawsuit, filed in the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe in late August, is just the latest legal case involving investment deals during the Richardson administration. In July, a state district judge approved a deal between the state and a Chicago-based investment firm, Vanderbilt Capital, for $24.25 million in a decadelong case. Vanderbilt had lost about $90 million in state funds through bad investments, though a judge did not determine there was evidence the company had committed fraud.
The state also has a pending lawsuit against the Correras, as well as Bland and Guy Riordan, a Richardson friend and former securities broker.
Hunt, the son of Lamar Hunt, who founded the Chiefs franchise as the AFL’s Dallas Texans in 1960, became CEO of the team after his father’s death in 2006.
A message left for an Albuquerque lawyer of Hunt’s was
not immediately returned.
The State Investment Council says in its lawsuit that the $300 million allocation from the council to the Hunt hedge fund was three times larger than any other received by fund managers who responded to the investment council’s request for proposals.
Hunt and his business partner met face to face in 2005 with the Correras at the Albuquerque International Sunport, according to the complaint, where the Correras told Hunt that “by virtue of Anthony Correra’s close relationship with Governor Richardson and their close relationship with Bland, they had influence with respect to the selection process.” The suit claims fund managers referred to the elder Correra as “gatekeeper” to Richardson and state investments.
Hunt and his partner, Barrett Wissman, who is not named as a defendant by the suit, paid Marc Correra a fee, according to the complaint, and Bland then awarded the Hunt-connected hedge fund the $300 million allocation, even though the State Investment Council’s hedge fund adviser “did not recommend” that hedge fund “be given any allocation whatsoever.”
Bland was authorized to award the investment funds “unilaterally,” without advising the investment council or obtaining its consent. But the millions in management fees paid to the hedge fund enriched Hunt and Wissman, the suit claims, at the expense of the state’s billions in public trust funds, which include the Land Grant Permanent Fund and Severance Tax Permanent Fund.
The suit claims Hunt authorized the fund to pay a brokerdealer associated with Marc Correra 25 percent of those management fees as a finders fee, despite the fact, as the suit claims, that Correra did not find the “well-publicized” request for proposals but rather was able to “tilt the selection process.”
Hunt and Wissman “knew they were paying for influence and were participating in a fraudulent scheme,” the complaint alleges, seeking restitution, civil penalties, compensatory and punitive damages and others.
The hedge fund underperformed the state benchmarks; one of its investments lost the State Investment Council more than $13 million, the suit says.
The complaint names as defendants Hunt, the hedge fund which received the SIC allocation — known at the time as Arbitex Asset Management, now called HFV Asset Management — and 20 unnamed defendants. These John Does are, the State Investment Council says, “Hunt family trusts through which Hunt owned some or all of his interest in HFV and/or of the trustees of those trusts.”
The case was assigned to District Court Chief Judge Sarah Singleton, according to court documents.