Related: Tales of Tax Evasion
"Cuomo said to seek deal with Rattner" by Associated Press | July 15, 2009
NEW YORK - The state attorney general has begun pressing for a legal settlement that would allow Steven Rattner, until recently a key Obama administration adviser on the auto industry, to avoid civil charges in an embarrassing influence-peddling case, the Associated Press has learned.
Rattner said Monday he was resigning his position on the White House’s auto industry task force. It remained unclear yesterday whether that departure had anything to do with the ongoing public corruption probe that has nibbled at his heels in New York.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Securities and Exchange Commission have charged a state official and a political consultant with extracting millions of dollars in kickbacks from investment firms trying to raise money from the state’s big public pension fund.
The private equity firm Rattner led before joining the Obama administration, the Quadrangle Group, paid more than $1 million to one of the people indicted in the case. A person familiar with the investigation said Cuomo’s office hasn’t been interested in pressing a criminal case against Rattner or Quadrangle but recently began pressing both for settlements that would allow them to avoid civil charges. The person wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
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