ALBANY – Disgraced former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi yesterday defended his handling of the state pension fund and knocked successor Thomas DiNapoli for trying to steal credit for the fund’s performance.
“Mr. DiNapoli continues to issue self-serving statements attacking Mr. Hevesi while at the same time attempting to take credit for the fund’s exemplary performance, even though it was Mr. Hevesi, not Mr. DiNapoli, who was in charge of the fund” for the bulk of the last fiscal year, Hevesi’s lawyer, Bradley Simon, said.
Simon noted that DiNapoli had been in office for only seven weeks of the fiscal year that ended March 31.
The statement was in response to a letter DiNapoli sent the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday, pledging cooperation with its preliminary investigation into the pension fund under Hevesi’s watch.