Fees for Friends: Vendetta [Andrew Cuomo Scandal]

Aug 30, 2006 [Part 2]

When Andrew Cuomo became HUD Secretary in 1997, he axed a federal program that had saved the US $2.2 billion between 1994 and 1997 and reinstituted a system that lost the government money while earning billions for favored friends.

He used the power of his office to target a former HUD official who had assisted his predecessor in operating the successful program. A HUD legal vendetta destroyed the official’s company before the Justice Department finally admitted there was no case and dropped it.

Now he is running for Attorney General of New York State.

Fees for Our Friends: The Scandal that Taints Andrew Cuomo

By Lucy Komisar
Aug 22, 2006 [Part 1]

When Andrew Cuomo became HUD Secretary in 1997, he reversed the policy of selling defaulted mortgages so that families could keep their homes. Instead, he chose to foreclose on mortgages, which meant that families lost their homes and insiders cleaned up on fire-sale priced properties. The program he axed had saved the U.S. $2.2 billion between 1994 and 1997. Cuomo fired the former HUD official whose company designed the program.

That wasn’t the only money big money lost under Cuomo. HUD reported at the time that $59 billion was missing! It couldn’t say where the money went, because it failed to produce audited financial statements.