(November 16, 2012) – Alan Hevesi, the former New York Comptroller and head of the $129.4 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, will be released from prison in time for the holidays.
Hevesi, 72, was granted parole after serving 19 months in prison on corruption charges for misuse of pension fund assets. Hevesi pleaded guilty in a pay-to-play scandal in 2010 after an investigation led by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo turned up “unlicensed placement agents, secret fees,” and favorable treatment of certain money managers who were major campaign contributors, according to a release from the attorney general’s office.
He had been sentenced to between one and four years in jail, and was held in a medium-security prison in Marcy, New York.
At a parole hearing last year, Hevesi was repentant, according to New York Times reports.
“I’m certainly guilty,” he said, adding, “I have time in prison to think through all the people that I’ve hurt.” Asked by the board then what he would have done differently, he said: “Not being moronically stupid.”
While Hevesi was the sole trustee of the state pension fund, he was not cited as the ringleader in the pay-to-play scandal. After his probe into the case, Cuomo accused Hevesi’s chief political consultant, Hank Morris, of leading a $35 million corruption scheme.
In fact, the former CIO of the New York State Common Retirement Fund (CRF), David Loglisci, pleaded guiltily along with the others, but received no jail time. The New York county grand jury’s 2009 indictment of Loglisci and Morris alleged that the CIO was little more than a pawn for the political strategist. The documents claimed that Morris and others arranged Loglisci’s appointment to CIO to facilitate “corruption of the alternative asset investment process.” In 2004, according to the indictment, these senior officials “determined that the original CIO of the CRF was not sufficiently accommodating” to Morris and his associates. Morris “participated in the decision to remove the original CIO and promote defendant Loglisci to that position.
Morris faced a parole board at the same time as Hevesi, but met a different end.
“After a review of the record, interview and extensive deliberations, the panel has determined that if released at this time, there is a reasonable probability that you would not live and remain at liberty without again violating the law and your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society,” the parole panel wrote in its decision.