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TMCNet: CalPERS trustee shows check payment for Dubai trip

[November 07, 2009]

CalPERS trustee shows check payment for Dubai trip

Nov 07, 2009 (The Sacramento Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A CalPERS board member on Thursday produced a canceled check showing he paid $23,630 for a trip to London, Dubai and Hong Kong in 2006 after it was initially paid for by a Nevada businessman whose clients were seeking investments from California's giant public employee pension fund.

Board member Charles Valdes gave The Bee a new explanation of how he paid for his Dubai trip a day after telling the newspaper he had repaid Nevada-based placement agent Alfred Villalobos in cash.

Valdes' new explanations came an hour after CalPERS board President Rob Feckner announced that he's asked trustees to stop meeting with placement agents like Villalobos and also ordered all financial firms and their agents to stop advancing travel money to "anyone associated with CalPERS." "Our investment partners and their agents must honor our travel policies if they want to continue to do business with CalPERS," said Feckner, who oversees the board of the $200 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System.

Valdes sent The Bee a copy of both sides of his canceled check by fax. Written off a Citibank super yield money market account, it was made out to Arvco Capital and dated Dec. 1, 2006. The signature of the Arvco employee who endorsed it was blacked out.

Asked about his different explanations of how he paid for his trip, Valdes replied: "I'm 69 years old and I have the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease. I couldn't remember." A CalPERS spokeswoman would not comment on Valdes' medical condition.

In a terse statement issued Thursday night, Feckner said that "in light of concerns that have emerged about placement agents," he's asked fellow trustees to stop meeting with any placement agents until an outside law firm that CalPERS hired finishes its special review of placement dealings.

The Steptoe & Johnson review was commissioned by CalPERS after its officials discovered that Villalobos made $50 million in commissions by lining up CalPERS investment deals. It released new documents Wednesday showing the commissions actually topped $60 million.

Placement agents are the middlemen who work to secure public pension fund investment dollars for their private equity firm clients and pocket big commissions.

Feckner also said CalPERS will consider "additional and more formal reforms" at November board meetings, saying the matters remain a top priority for him, his board and CalPERS.

Feckner's statement followed two reports in The Bee this week that explored dealings between Villalobos, a former CalPERS board member himself, his Arvco companies, and former CalPERS chief executive Fred Buenrostro and CalPERS trustee Valdes.

The Bee reported that Valdes took a $15,000 trip to London, Dubai and Hong Kong in 2006 with Villalobos, who paid for all the first class travel for the journey on a personal credit card.

Valdes asked to take the trip to Dubai to attend an investment conference in November 2006, and it was approved by Feckner and the CalPERS board. Feckner decided that CalPERS would pay for all costs, but Valdes never submitted an expense claim for it.

On Wednesday, Valdes said he reimbursed Villalobos in cash immediately afterward "for the entire cost of that trip -- about $13,000." Told that the airfare alone for his trip was more than $15,000, Valdes shot back, "then I paid him more." Valdes says he never submitted a travel claim to CalPERS for the trip because of its cost.

"That's why I never submitted the travel claim to CalPERS. I didn't want the system to pay for it because it cost so much," Valdes added.

The Bee also reported that Villalobos lent his Lake Tahoe mansion to Buenrostro as the venue for the CalPERS boss's private wedding in 2004.

Buenrostro said Villalobos picked up the tab for the affair, but that he later refunded him for most or all of the costs, without ever seeing all the receipts. Feckner said he's shared details of both reports with the outside law firm, Steptoe & Johnson, "to do a thorough examination as part of a special review." Kathay Feng, executive director of Common Cause California, said Feckner's announcement "is a good one, and it's a strong one and it's long overdue." "It's a no-brainer that individuals who are in charge of oversight ... of millions of dollars in retirement funds need to have a bright line drawn," Feng said.

------ Call The Bee Capitol Bureau's Andrew McIntosh at (916) 321-1215. The Bee's Dale Kasler contributed to this report.

To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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