| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| FBI looks into secret $40,000 personal loan to Queens pol Gregory Meeks |
| 2010-07-09 |
| Queens Congressman Gregory Meeks made no payments for three years on a secret $40,000 personal loan - and repaid the cash only when the FBI started asking questions, the Daily News has learned. Meeks received a check for $40,000 from Queens businessman Ed Ahmad in January 2007 to finish paying off his new $830,000 home, two sources familiar with the matter said. There was no discussion about interest rates, due dates or collateral requirements for the loan, the sources said, and Meeks did not report it on his 2007 and 2008 financial disclosure forms. The congressman made no payments on the loan until early last month, a few weeks after the FBI questioned Ahmad about the check, the sources said. That's when Meeks sent Ahmad a check for $59,000, having tacked on an annual interest rate of about 12.5%, the sources said. In an interview, Meeks admitted he could not find documents to back up the loan. He also did not respond to a News request for copies of cancelled checks. "There was documents. I don't have them right now," he said in his first explanation of the loan since The News revealed its existence last month. Meeks would say only that he got the loan from Ahmad sometime in 2007. Ahmad and his lawyer, Steven Kartagener, declined to comment. Meeks, a Democrat, said the loan carried an annual interest rate of 12.5% and was due within 10 years. He told The News he paid it back sometime last year, but could not say when. "I don't remember," he said. He revealed the loan for the first time on his 2009 form, which was filed last month. If Meeks deliberately withheld this information, he could be charged criminally with filing a false statement, said Melanie Sloan, director of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "He's got a real problem with false statements," Sloan said of Meeks. "It doesn't sound like an accident." Federal prosecutors already have subpoenaed documents from Meeks and several other Queens politicians in an ongoing corruption probe. Meeks insisted he was not the target of the probe. "I'm not under investigation, nor is there any reason to investigate me," he said. "The only things that have been subpoenaed are records." Meeks told The News the money he borrowed from Ahmad - a developer, importer and mortgage broker - paid for unspecified "needs" related to the opulent home he built in Jamaica, Queens, in October 2006. The money was "for my family obligations, etc. I was in a new house. It's taking care of things for my family needs in the house," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Notice that the article plays Name That Party until the fifth or sixth paragrph. Of course, the fact that he is a Democrat means that the FBI might as well stop wasting their time investgating him. Even in the unlikely event that they actually get a conviction, I doubt he will spend a day in jail. Laws and ethics rules are for ordinary citizens and Republican congress critters. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2010-07-09 04:12 |