Saul Meyer Avoids Jail

A key player in New Mexico’s pay-to-play story walked away from his sentencing hearing in New York without seeing prison bars in his future. Saul Meyer, former head of Aldus Equity, received leniency for his cooperation with law enforcement authorities.  That cooperation included divulging what he knew about the pay-to-play game as it was practiced in New Mexico.

Meyer received a conditional discharge, meaning the charges aginst him are effectively dismissed.  Meyer has already forfeited $1 million in fees he earned from the scheme that exploited political connections to win investments of New York’s pension funds.

Meyer’s plea deal with the New York Attorney General required him to cooperate with investigations examining whether the placement of investments of New Mexico’s permanent funds involved any criminal wrongdoing.  So far, no indictments have been returned from a grand jury investigation that has been conducted sporadically by the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico.

Meyer is a key defendant in the civil lawsuit filed by the State Investment Council to recover damages arising from politically connected surreptitious third-party placement fees paid by fund managers to secure contracts to manage billions of dollars of state permanent funds. Meyer’s former firm, Aldus Equity Advisers, advised the SIC on their private equity investments.  Meyer admitted in his New York guilty plea that he had given investment advice on the basis of serving the interests of politically connected individuals that were not in the best interest of New Mexico’s taxpayers.

Meyer’s plea deal did not require him to waive any rights against civil claims arising from his work for the SIC.

You can read our two most recent reports on the SIC’s civil suit here and here.

Here is the Business Week report on Meyer’s sentencing.

Meyer’s former partners secretly recorded him describing how New Mexico’s pay-to-play culture operated.  In the recording, Meyer said that Anthony and Marc Correra, close political allies of former Gov. Bill Richardson, called the shots on who got state investments.  Meyer also claimed to have received a $10,000 cash bribe from Anthony Correra.

Anthony is Marc Correra’s father.  Both men are co-defendants with Meyer in the SIC’s lawsuit.  The lawsuit is pending in Santa Fe District Court.