Free Republic

SAN DIEGO – A federal grand jury returned an indictment in the pension fund case Friday afternoon. Its details are to be announced at 2 p.m. The jury's foreman and federal prosecutor John Owens stood before U.S. District Judge Irma Gonzalez shortly before 1 p.m. to notify the judge and get her signature on the document. Nothing was revealed about its contents, and Owens declined to discuss it outside of court, but the U.S. Attorney's office has scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. at its downtown offices.

Consultants trying to unravel the issues surrounding San Diego's tangled finances told city officials yesterday that their work will take until at least mid-March to complete, three months later than their recent estimate. The development adds to the uncertainty the city faces over its fiscal condition and is likely to further delay the release of long-overdue financial statements that are needed for San Diego to re-enter the municipal bond market. KPMG, the accounting firm conducting the 2003 audit, has predicted that it will take at least a month to issue the statements after Kroll Inc., the firm handling the investigation,...

A politically connected businessman has been indicted for a second time on federal fraud charges. Stuart Levine is linked to a scam involving the Illinois Teachers Pension Fund along with one of the Democratic party's biggest fund raisers, Joseph Cari. The message from the feds Wednesday is crystal clear: Chicago City Hall is only one of the fronts in the war on government corruption. It also appears to be rampant at the boards and commissions that oversee billions of dollars in state of Illinois programs. One of the alleged scammers is multi-millionaire businessman Stuart Levine. Another is Joe Cari, one...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Three city employees linked to a pension-fund scandal have resigned amid deepening federal probes into city finances. The officials left to "pursue other professional interests," City Manager Lamont Ewell wrote Monday to Mayor Dick Murphy and the City Council. Ewell did not elaborate on the timing or circumstances that led to the departures of Patricia Frazier, the deputy city manager for development services; Cathy Lexin, human resources director; and Mary Vattimo, who was city treasurer until being reassigned recently to a lower-profile purchasing job. Messages left with Lexin, Frazier and Vattimo at their offices were not...

GENEVA – The booming U.S. private equity market could be heading for a crash as interest rates rise and hedge funds, desperately seeking higher returns, pour money into the sector, the chief investment officer for the biggest pension fund in the United States warned on Wednesday. "The biggest one (asset bubble) I'm afraid of at the moment is private equity," Mark Anson, CIO for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), told the International Fund Management 2005 conference organised by ICBI. "The current overhang of leveraged buyouts committed but not invested is $182 billion (end-2003 figure). A lot of money...

Employees in the city of San Diego's treasurer's office – ground zero in federal investigations of city finances – destroyed numerous records last month, prompting a warning from City Manager Lamont Ewell yesterday. The destruction of records was revealed yesterday by City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who said he learned from an unnamed city employee Thursday night that about 20 people in the treasurer's Financing Services division dumped whole files into recycle bins and erased e-mails. The news spurred a terse e-mail from Ewell to "all city employees," warning against the destruction of documents that might be sought by federal investigators...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The nation's largest pension fund announced Tuesday it is filing a class action lawsuit against the New York Stock Exchange, alleging that fraudulent practices cost it millions of dollars in recent years. The $154 billion California Public Employees Retirement System, representing an estimated 1.4 million members, will seek to recover pension fund investment money it lost because of alleged fraud at the stock exchange, said California Treasurer Phil Angelides. The unprecedented lawsuit seeks an unnamed amount of money from the exchange, but officials of the pension fund said it could add up to hundreds of millions of...

Shortfall persists despite rebound of stock markets WASHINGTON - Many of the largest companies in the United States face an ever-increasing pension fund shortfall even though stock markets have ended their three-year losing streak, according to a new study by Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. The shortage among Standard & Poor's 500 companies is expected to rise 10% this year to US$247-billion from US$225-billion in 2002, even though pension investments are expected to rise about 11.5% during 2003, said David Zion, a Credit Suisse analyst and author of the study. "You may think we're losing our minds, with the stock...

<p>The California Public Employees' Retirement System announced Wednesday that it will release financial results for its private equity investments as part of a legal settlement with the Mercury News.</p> <p>Experts said the settlement by CalPERS should translate into more public disclosure of information by the secretive $600 billion world of private equity.</p>

<p>Global Crossing Ltd. is battling to retain $500 million in pension funds that a Connecticut firm maintains it acquired when it bought the telecommunications company's local-telephone operations here for $3.7 billion.</p> <p>Citizens Communications of Stamford, Conn., asserts the buyout deal, completed six months ago, required Bermuda-based Global Crossing to hand over the pension accounts of 2,200 telephone workers who went with the transaction.</p>