About the Financial Institution Mentioned in the Sun-Times: Obama, Tony Rezko, Amrish Mahajan, the Kenwood Mansion & Rita Rezko
By Truthteller on October 12, 2008 at 3:09 AM in Alexi Giannoulias, Allison Davis, Barack Obama, Bloggers, Campaigns & Campaign Financing, Chicago, Chicago Mansion, Chicago politics, Corruption, Crime, FBI, Fund Raising, Home Loan, Illinois senate, Obama, Obama's Thugs, Patrick Fitzgerald, Real Estate, Richard Daley, Tony Rezko
**********Truthteller asks bloggers and reporters to direct their attention to Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey.**********
Mike Robinson’s AP article entitled “Obama Fundraiser, Convicted of Fraud, Spills Beans,” corroborates what we at No Quarter have been writing for weeks: Antoin “Tony” Rezko is cooperating with federal prosecutors interested in Barack Obama. While the national media’s attention to this topic is long overdue, I am not prepared to state that it is too little, too late. I am, however, disappointed.
Also disappointing but somewhat predictable is the blogosphere’s bungled reception of Mike Robinson’s article. Of course those who have embraced Obama will dismiss the story as so much yellow journalism. One blogger claims that prosecutors are interested in Blagojevich and not Obama. But looming in the blind spot of that blogger’s necessarily tendentious gaze is Rezko’s 9 JUN 2008 letter to Judge Amy St. Eve and the reference to Obama as “Individual D” in the superseding indictment and the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors during the Rezko trial. Obama’s name can be printed again and again on the surface of the legal documents filed during the proceedings of the Rezko trial, but these writers with all their “naked” insight will clothe the verifiable record with their blindness. Knowledge production, it seems, has been lifted from its evidentiary supports when Democrats write about Barack Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko.
And yes, those Democrats include some ostensible Hillary Clinton Democrats. Seizing upon the following quotation in a Chicago Sun-Times column, one blogger believes the AP story heralds the end of the political careers of Alexi Giannoulias and Barack Obama:
Stay tuned.
While Rezko was a customer of Alexi Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank, where he amassed a debt of $450,000 after writing bad checks at Las Vegas casinos, and while Giannoulias did write loans for Rezko, I do not believe one can aver with the confidence of the blogger I cite above that federal prosecutors are now focusing on Giannoulias, even if Giannoulias was tied to Rezko by his opponent during his 2006 bid for the office of Illinois state Treasurer. Allow me to be clear: Obama bundler, mobster banker and Obama protégé Giannoulias is, to be sure, embroiled in the Rezko scandal and in other aspects of Chicago politics any political observer would find unsavory, but he is not in my opinion the topic of the conservation occurring between Rezko, Rezko’s attorney and Fitzgerald’s team of prosecutors. I do admit he is grist for the mill of impetuous bloggers who desire web traffic and a controversial headline or two, however. Because I tend to rely on evidence and not on hearsay, I believe we should focus our attention on Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey, not on Giannoulias and the Broadway Bank, if we are to assign names to the financial institution about which Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times has heard “rumblings.” Although Mahajan is not known to readers of No Quarter and to the national media, I imagine they will desire more information on the unscrupulous banker once they read the information I unpack below the fold. And yes, Obama is involved, deeply involved.
My interest in Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey was picqued by this list of contributors in Rezko’s bundling network provided by the Chicago Sun-Times last March. View the second page of the document, and notice the following entry:
| Last name | First name | Obama donations | Rezko connection |
| Mahajan | Amrish | $2,500 | Banker whose bank loaned money to Rezko companies. The bank also loaned Rezko’s wife money to buy a vacant lot next to Obama’s home. |
The data available in the Sun-Times spreadsheet is corroborated by the following data, which is democratically available at the Federal Election Commission‘s website:
MAHAJAN, AMRISH
CHICAGO, IL 60607
MUTUAL BANKOBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
12/20/2003 500.00 24020030170
04/14/2004 1000.00 24020461757
Not only was Mahajan a member of Rezko’s bundling network; his bank, the Mutual Bank of Harvey, granted Rita Rezko the $500,000 mortgage she needed in order to purchase the lot on which the Obama mansion in Chicago sits. As many of you may recall, the Obamas could not have purchased the mansion they could not afford unless transactions for the mansion and the lot closed on the same day. Obama needed to locate someone who would buy the lot, and he approached Rezko, the convicted slumlord with whom Obama toured the property before they mutually agreed to the following arrangement:
The home and lot sales closed on June 15, 2005. A land trust controlled by the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, and the Obamas secured a $1.32 million mortgage from Northern Trust to complete that purchase. That same day, Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the side lot for $625,000. A $37,000- a-year Cook County employee, she secured a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey.
The structure of this transaction begs the following question: What bank would lend a government employee who earns $37,000 per annum a $500,000 mortgage? What bank would assume such a risk?
The Mutual Bank of Harvey, of course, for the Mutual Bank of Harvey’s President is a man who is deeply connected to the Chicago machine that backed Barack Obama. Indeed, Amrish Mahajan was one of Mayor Daley’s first political appointments in 1989, when he was named to a seat on Chicago’s Plan Commission, where he would be joined by Obama’s former boss and Rezko’s business partner Allison Davis and by Valerie Jarrett, Daley’s Chief of Staff who chaired the Commission from 1991-1995. Mahajan, in other words, worked with those who devised and profited from Daley’s failed public housing experiment in Chicago, a public housing policy Obama helped fund as state Senator and US Senator.
Rezko, according to the Boston Globe, was one of the major beneficiaries of Obama’s legislative advocacy for funding of Daley’s public housing experiment. Other major beneficiaries are Jarrett and Allison Davis. Mahajan was also a beneficiary, for his bank had made $3.4 million dollars in loans to Tony Rezko’s slum landlord business since 2002. A banker for one of the slumlords who benefitted from the Daley housing program Obama helped bankroll, Mahajan was returning a favor when he wrote a $500,000 mortgage in 2005 for the wife of one of his clients. Although Tony’s financial problems were mounting in 2005, and although Rita earned only $35,000 per annum, Mahajan underwrote the mortgage. Favors must be reciprocated, I guess, especially when one can satisfy two parties at once: the person with whom one has a complicated relationship in real estate and the politician who helped finance that complicated relationship as state Senator and US Senator.
I doubt federal investigators are interested in the Mahajans solely for their involvement in the property deal involving Obama, Mahajan and the Rezkos. The Mahajans, I believe, are the foci of their probe for many reasons.
- Anita Mahajan, the wife of Amrish, has been involved with questionable real estate deals that are the subject of federal probes with Governor Blagojevich’s wife, Patricia
- Anita Mahajan exploited lucrative no bid contracts with the Department of Children and Family Services to steal $2.1 million from Illinois taxpayers; she was charged and released on a $250,000 bond in March 2007
- “Uncle Amrish” has raised more than a half million for Blagojevich and approximately $50,000 for Mayor Daley, whose father helped launch Mahajan’s banking career
- “Uncle Amrish” also helped Obama purchase a house he could not afford
The real estate transaction involving Rita Rezko, the Obamas and Mutual Bank of Harvey is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the Mutual Bank of Harvey seems to be at the center of all the corruption in Chicago. To quote former Donald Perillo, Chicago insurance mogul and son of the lawyer for Al Capone, in the Chicago Tribune article I cite above:
Donald Parrillo said he isn’t surprised to see Mahajan mix it up with politics and business. “He got that attitude from the Parrillo family,” the former alderman said. “He wanted to get in the game.”
And Mahajan certainly is in the game. The banker of the Chicago machine, he is also the man who wrote the mortgage for Rita Rezko that facilitated Obama’s purchase the mansion he could not afford. This is why I believe prosecutors are interested in Harvey Mutual Bank. Not only did Rezko receive loans from this institution; this bank is heavily involved in problematic real estate dealings involving Blagojevich and Obama. And if I may quote Rezko in the 9 JUN letter he wrote to Judge Amy St. Eve:
Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”
Rezko is now talking, and prosecutors are presently interested in a politically connected financial institution. I bet Obama now regrets paying Rita Rezko $104,500 for the strip of the land in the lot on which his house sits in January 2006. Acquired with the assistance of a questionable $500,000 mortgage from Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank of Harvey, this lot and Obama’s desire to expand his yard by bit was the catalyst for all the investigative reports into Obama’s deep ties to Rezko. By the way, Rita’s lot is only accessible through the front gate of Obama’s home; it is not a separate property, and it was never intended to be a separate property.
“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama says of the real estate transactions with Rezko. I wonder if now he also believes it was a mistake for him to serve as the legislator who represented and bankrolled Richard Daley, Amrish Mahajan, Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis and the Chicago Plan Commission. But at least he and Michelle have a house, a house the Mutual Bank of Harvey, the politically connected bank that wrote loans for Rezko, helped them procure in 2005. Too bad that house will be the end of Barack Obama.
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No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:
- Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama – Dominoes?
- CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
- More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
- The Epistolary Rezko
- The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
- Obama’s Gangster Mentality
- Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
- “CHICAGO MACHINE”
- The Tipping Point?
- Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
- Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
- Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
- Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
- Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
- What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
- Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
- A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
- Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
- Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
- What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
- It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
- Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
- Be My Friend, Godfather
- Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
- The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
- Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
- Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
- Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
- Those Who Haunt Him
- Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
- “Nobie and Obama”
- Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
- What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
- This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
- Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
- Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
- The Forgotten People
- Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
- Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
- The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
- Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
- The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
- Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
- Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
- Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
- Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
- ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
- 312.321.2417
- (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
- Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
- Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
- Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
- Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
- No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
- More Questions on Rezko
- “Obama Bagman” in Jail
- Democratic Death Wish
- How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
- Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
- It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
- 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
- Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
- Politics Is A Blood Sport
- BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
- CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
- FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
- A Dope with Hope?
- Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
- Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
- Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
- Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
- All in for Hillary
- Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies
RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.
Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”
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