Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
TagsChris Christie bought and sold stock in a travel and real estate company while it was under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office he led at the time, The Star-Ledger reported Wednesday.
Christie, now the Republican candidate for governor, purchased shares of Cendant Corp. in 2004 and sold them in 2005, according to financial disclosure reports he filed with the U.S. Justice Department. In 2002, his office had renewed an investigation into Cendant, leading to fraud convictions of two of its former top executives in 2005 and 2007.
Asked about the investment Wednesday by the newspaper, Christie acknowledged seeing it on his disclosure reports but said his financial adviser bought and sold the stocks without his knowledge. He said he did not recall the precise value of the stock, which the forms show in the $1,000 to $15,000 range.
"The way my investments work, I had no authority to order either the buying or the selling of any particular stock in that fund," Christie said. "I was not making the decision to buy or the decision to sell."Christie has previously said he uses a financial adviser but kept "an eye on" the stocks chosen to avoid conflicts with investigations and "to make sure that we weren't in anything that we had a problem with," The Star-Ledger noted.
Christie told reporters Wednesday that his office had continued the investigation into Cendant as part of a probe already conducted by his predecessor. He said the only thing prosecutors did related to Cendant during his time as U.S. Attorney was to pursue former executives who had already been charged and had left the company.
"Cendant was not a party to anything we were doing in the office," Christie said.
In 2002, Christie said federal prosecutors were "taking a fresh look at the entire case" of the 1998 multibillion-dollar meltdown of Cendant. Cendant was based in Parsippany at the time of the fraud and still has offices there, though it is now based in New York. Two of the company's former executives, Walter Forbes and Kirk Shelton, were sentenced to jail time as a result of the renewed investigation into the accounting scandal.
Christie's investments came under scrutiny as the candidates' personal finances have become an issue in the governor's race. Republicans this week have criticized Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine over his stake in TPG-Axon, a hedge fund founded by the corporate owner of four New Jersey casinos. Corzine says there is no conflict of interest because TPG-Axon is not invested in the state-regulated casinos.
Star-Ledger reporters Josh Margolin and Claire Heininger broke the story.