A prominent Miami marketing firm that involved the wife of U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart has federal tax trouble (November 9, 2009 South Florida Business Journal). At the same time, BankUnited has sued developer Sergio Pino to force him to pay a $34 million loan on a Doral project after the developer failed to pay property taxes for the 4,600-townhouse Century Grand development. It is only the latest in a series of legal and financial problems for the developer and lobbyist whose ambitions to convert wetlands and land outside the Urban Development Boundary into suburban sprawl ran straight into the housing market crash. (click 'read more')
The public relations and lobbying firm owned by Seth Gordon and Diaz-Balart represented the boom times growth in condos and suburbs. Today, housing markets are in complete disarray. Pino, a major GOP campaign contributor and financier of local political campaigns is president and chief executive of Century Homebuilders in Miami and a founding director of US Century Bank. He owes about $5 million in taxes for 2008 on the 300 acres of undeveloped land backing the loan. (November 11, 2009, Daily Business Review)
The IRS has filed $67,303.61 worth of liens in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court against Gordon and Diaz-Balart. Gordon told the Business Journal, “I’m fighting with the IRS,” he said. “It’s none of anyone’s business. I’m not going to talk about it.” Pino groused about BankUnited, "They came here like carpetbaggers and had no intention of working with me. They are new people and don’t know this community at all.”
This community is the most populous and politically influential in a swing state, run by builder associations and lobbyists like Pino. It is also the political epicenter of the housing boom. It took a lot of political muscle to force regulators to turn a blind eye to the accumulation of risk that was portrayed, back then, by spin doctors and public relations firms as "what the market wanted".
Florida topped the nation in the percent of home loans in foreclosure for the third quarter of this year with banks taking back 12.74 percent of the state's mortgages. According to First America CoreLogic, in the third quarter nearly half of all homeowner mortgages in Florida were at or near underwater.
5 comments:
Pino's investors must be livid. He got his partnership percentages for aggregating the land and making sure the zoning approvals were in place: they're having to pony up the mortgage and holding costs. It will be interesting to see who bails out, who, and how many taxpayer dollars go to the rescue of the syndicate originators.
Speaking of Sergio Pino, he also is part owner and serves on the board of U.S. Century Bank. It is one of the banks from our area that received TARP money. How's that for justice. By the way, other members on the Century Board: Rodney Barreto and Jose Cancela -- lobbyists/politicians extraordinaire. Is this a great county or what?
Elected officials will give anything away as they pimp for votes.
Enter Century Bank or Pino or Barreto in the search engine of this blog to read more.
So why didn't Pino hang the debt on his own bank instead of making a risky loan from another bank? Maybe he knew it was not too sound.
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