Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a close personal friend and financial supporter of Obama who is running in Tuesday's Democratic primary for the President's former Senate seat, says that with respect to some troubling loans he made while serving as chief lending officer from 2002 - 2006 for his family's Broadway Bank -- now operating under a federal consent order -- that "If I knew then what I know now, obviously we wouldn't have made those loans" as reported by Abdon M. Pallasch for the Chicago Sun-Times:
Among the loans Giannoulias has gotten heat for:
* More than $10 million from 2001 to 2005 to alleged Father & Son Russian mobster team Lev and Boris Stratievsky. Father Lev has passed away. Son Boris is in jail facing money-laundering charges. Broadway funded development projects some on the South Side — that tenants and city attorneys complained were roach motels. Broadway has been unable to collect on the loans.
* About $12.9 million to convicted bookmaker Michael Giorango for a Miami Beach hotel and a Hollywood, Fla., restaurant, among other ventures, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Broadway has sued Giorango and his partner, Demitri Stavropoulos, convicted of running a betting operation in Chicago, seeking to get the money back. Giannoulias initially downplayed his relationship with Giorango, noting the loans to him started before he joined the bank. Later he said he went to Miami to meet Giorango and inspect the property, and that another $3 million loan to Giorango was for a South Carolina casino.
"If I knew then what I know now, obviously we wouldn't have made those loans." Alexi, dude, that's precisely the stubborn point you're blindly missing: you were the freakin' chief lending officer, and your duty was to know your customer before you made the loans but you failed in that duty for reasons known only to you.
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