« Public information meeting on plaza design for arena will be held September 29 at Borough Hall | Main | Forest City Ratner's green-cards-for-investments scheme is part of a pattern (MTA, Beekman), but job-saving claims demand scrutiny »
September 23, 2010
Behind the New York City Regional Center's visas-for-investments program, one of New Jersey's questionable "Billboard Boys"
Atlantic Yards Report
Here's a shocker — one of the two key guys behind the front operation for Bruce Ratner's bowling-for-green cards scheme has a track record of being a sleazeball.
Paul Levinsohn, one of two Managing Principals in the New York City Regional Center--the investment vehicle Forest City Ratner aims to use to raise $249 million (mainly) from Chinese millionaires--has a bit of a history as an operator, exploiting a legal loophole to get rich.
He has an important cameo in The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption, by Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure [NLG: no relation] (as pointed out to me by Michael D.D. White):
Gary Taffet and Paul Levinsohn went from being on [Governor Jim] McGreevey's election campaign to being chief of staff and chief counsel, respectively. Their tenure was short-lived, however, and they became known as "the Billboard Boys."
Levinsohn and Taffet formed a billboard business three years before McGreevey's inauguration whiel working for McGreevey's campaign and with everyone knowing their clout with McGreevey--correctly predicted to be the next governor.
...[Philcor Media] developed billboards for which they needed local and state agency approval.
Just before becoming part of the McGreevey administration, Taffet and Levinsohn sold the approved billboards and billboard sites for $4 million. The Philadelphia Inquirer investigated and reported: "[Francis] Doyle is identified on public documents as the sole owner of Philcor, but his corporation received none of the billboard proceeds, sale documents show. Instead, the money was distributed to two corporations extablished by Taffet and Levinsohn.
But those corporations were not part of the public documents seeking government approvals.
Levinsohn claimed he and his partner sold the billboard company five days before McGreevey took office and they became state employees. However, according to the book, Levinsohn actually was sworn in a month earlier and was still doing billboard business with NJ Transit--even though that's against state law.
NoLandGrab: Amazingly, there really isn't a single aspect of Atlantic Yards that's on the up and up.
Posted by eric at September 23, 2010 10:48 AM