Business

Obama official hid Fannie and Freddie’s profit mojo: suit

An Obama administration official misled a federal court in 2013 when he stated the government did not know Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were about to return to profitability, lawyers for Fairholme Funds, a big shareholder in the mortgage giants, claimed in a recent court filing.

More than a year earlier, when losses at the two companies were forecast far into the future, the government moved to sweep any possible future Fannie and Freddie profits into Treasury’s coffers.

But just weeks after the sweep, both Fannie and Freddie returned to profitability — and now lawyers for Fairholme, citing recently uncovered evidence, claim the official was not being honest.

The official, Mario Ugoletti, a veteran of the Treasury Department who has worked at Fannie and Freddie’s regulator since 2009, made “at a minimum, misleading” statements to a federal court that aren’t “credible,” Fairholme’s lawyers said in a recent court filing.

The Fairholme filing is based on depositions of seven government officials and others, as well as documents handed over by the government. The documents, filed under seal, are available publicly only in a heavily redacted version.

But Fairholme’s lawyers were able to view unredacted versions of the documents and based their arguments on those versions.

Fairholme, a $8.5 billion mutual fund firm fund run by star investor Bruce Berkowitz, invested about $1 billion in preferred shares of Fannie and Freddie, along with a small number of common shares.

Berkowitz, 57, has waged a long legal fight to loosen Uncle Sam’s grip on the companies’ profits — for good reason. The face value of his preferred shares is $4 billion-plus.

If future profits stay with the companies, shareholders will gain as the value of the companies rise.

Fairholme lawyers are also planning to depose former White House National Economic Council senior adviser Jim Parrott, who was directly involved in the sweep decision, sources told The Post.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put into conservatorship in 2008. Treasury then forced them to put $300 billion in non-cash charges — primarily huge loan-loss reserves and a write-off of deferred tax assets — on their books. That wiped out all shareholder value and necessitated a $187 billion taxpayer bailout.

But by 2012, with the housing market recovering, most of the paper losses never materialized and were about to be reversed. The accounting “losses” became gains.

Weeks before those gains were booked, Treasury and the Federal Housing Finance Agency — which runs the government-backed mortgage giants — abruptly changed the rules of the conservatorship.

Instead of paying a dividend, Freddie and Fannie would have to return all future profits to the government to pay back the bailout, they decided.

The FHFA’s Ugoletti, in a sworn statement to the federal court on Dec. 17, 2013, denied that the FHFA and Treasury knew accounting losses would soon be reversed when the sweep occurred.

But Susan McFarland, the Fannie chief financial officer who was there in 2012 when the decisions were made, disputes Ugoletti’s statements, Fairholme lawyers said in their Aug. 19 filing.

Ugoletti was also deposed by Fairholme lawyers, who claimed that his prior sworn statement regarding the deferred tax assets “is, at a minimum, misleading.”

The US declined to comment on Fairholme’s allegations.

Since 2012, the mortgage giants have repaid Treasury the full amount of the bailout — plus $43 billion. Another $8.3 billion is being returned in September.