A federal judge called owners of a bank, which helped the Obamas finance a sweetheart deal to buy an empty lot next to their Chicago home, the “most pervasively corrupt litigants” he’s ever dealt with.
US Bankruptcy Court Judge Eugene Wedoff accused the Veluchamy family of rampant corruption in a stinging opinion handed down last month. Wedoff presided over a case that charged the family with fraudulently shielding assets from the Bank of America to avoid repaying $40 million in bad loans after the collapse of their own bank, the Mutual Bank of Harvey.
Judge Wedoff ruled that the family must pay over $50 million to BoA and other creditors.
In his ruling, the judge held that the family purposefully attempted to defraud creditors and “created false documents and destroyed authentic ones” to further the scheme.
Wedoff’s findings reflect the opinion of an earlier judge who, in 2011, called the family “pervasively corrupt.”
“The Veluchamys’ family members may perhaps be–and I make no finding on this–the most pervasively corrupt litigants that I have been exposed to in something more than three decades that I have been on the bench,” U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur said.
Various other members of the Mutual Bank of Harvey have also been punished for corruption.
In July of 2013, former bank president Amrish Mahajan was barred from banking in Illinois for his part in the bank’s consistently fraudulent dealings.
It was Mahajan who entered into a deal with corrupt Illinois political hack Tony Rezko to secure a loan for $500,000 for then-US Senator Obama to buy the empty lot next to his Hyde Park home.
In 2008, Rezko was convicted on corruption charges and sent to prison.
Rezko was a close associate and fundraiser for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who himself was convicted and jailed for corruption in 2011.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.