ALBANY – A Texas-based hedge fund that received $100 million in New York state pension investments paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in “referral fees” as part of the deal to a company tied to former Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s top consultant, The Post has learned.
At the time it was seeking to do business with New York’s $150 billion pension fund, Hunt Financial Ventures of Dallas was told to contact Hevesi’s political guru, Hank Morris, according to the hedge fund’s lawyer, Bill Brewer.
The man responsible for steering the hedge fund to Morris was former City Council President Andrew Stein, who now works as a business consultant, Brewer said.
Brewer told The Post that Morris, in turn, instructed Hunt to pay the referral fees to certain companies.
The outfit collecting the fees now is Searle & Co., a small Greenwich, Conn., financial-services firm located above a Christian Science reading room. Searle is headed by Robert Searle, a longtime personal friend of Morris.
The fees paid to Searle are based on a percentage of the hedge fund’s return on the pension investment and a slice of what Hunt charges for fund management.
Investigators have described Morris as “associated” with the Searle firm and believe he received the lion’s share of the pension-related referral fees paid to the company by entities that received large investments from the pension fund.
Investigators are trying to determine if Searle and Morris did any work in return for collecting large referral fees and whether all the payments were properly disclosed, sources said.
Morris is a nationally known Democratic political consultant who spearheaded Hevesi’s election as comptroller in 2002, as well as Sen. Charles Schumer’s successful campaigns in 1998 and 2004.
The Post recently revealed that Searle & Co. last month amended its most recent required filing with the Securities Exchange Commission to disclose that it received $6 million more in fees than it had originally reported, bringing the total for last year to $7.7 million.
In its revised report, Searle also showed it paid out about $7.3 million of the fees; the recipient is not indicated. The original filing showed no fees paid out.
Comptroller’s Office documents relating to Hunt’s dealings with the pension fund – which began in 2004 – have disappeared and are believed to have been swiped by a former top official in the office.
Brewer said the hedge fund has recently been contacted by investigators from state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office, as well as the Comptroller’s Office, as they seek to re-create the missing information as part of a criminal probe into pension investments under Hevesi.
Hunt is partly owned by Barrett Wissman, who, sources said, is a friend of David Loglisci, a former deputy comptroller who oversaw the pension fund under Hevesi and is suspected by probers of having removed the important documents from the office. Wissman is also a pal of Loglisci’s brother Steve Loglisci.
Wissman, who along with his wife is actively involved in the classical-music scene in Texas, invested in a poorly received movie, “Chooch,” which was produced by Steve Loglisci in 2003, sources said.
Wissman is also chairman of IMG Artists, whose clients include Itzhak Perlman, opera singer Frederica von Stade, and guitarist Christopher Parkening.
Brewer denied Hunt received hedge-fund investments from the Comptroller’s Office because of Wissman’s ties to the Loglisci brothers. He said officials made their connection with the pension fund through Stein, a well-connected city Democrat with whom they were familiar, although Brewer didn’t provide details of that relationship.
Stein told The Post he had lunch once with Wissman and the Loglisci brothers, but said they only discussed “Chooch,” not the pension funds. Stein called it “utter nonsense” that he referred Wissman to Morris.
Brewer said Hunt is cooperating with the investigation into the pension fund, which is being conducted jointly by Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney David Soares.
He added that no officials from the firm have been subpoenaed or asked by investigators to be interviewed, and that the fund had made all required disclosures.
Hunt was among the two top-producing hedge funds for the state pension system during Hevesi’s four years in office, the lawyer said.
Morris and his lawyer, William Schwartz, did not return calls for comment. Searle also did not return calls.
Hevesi’s lawyer, Bradley Simon, said his client had done nothing improper with regard to the pension fund.