Liberal cabinet minister Tony Valeri is innocent until proven guilty and if there’s even anything here, which there very well may not be.
This was reported just before the weekend when news gets lost, so I thought I’d wait until today for your convenience. What’s this? It’s the last week of an election campaign? Oh darn the luck.
Seems that last April, Liberal cabinet minister Tony Valeri bought a piece of property next door to his house for $225,000, then three months later flipped the property (sold it) for $500,000 —a profit of $275,000.
Good on ’im. More power to him (literally!) I’d love to be able to do that. Most Canadians would.
But who would buy a house for double what the previous guy bought it for? Especially since absolutely nothing was done to improve the property.
Turns out Valeri sold it to a man who, whadyaknow, has some financial ties to the Liberal Party through his father. Someone who would seem to comprehend the matter of investment property values.
I’m not saying there was anything criminal going on here. I just don’t know. Valeri won’t say anything, really, except that he’s launching lawsuits against a news outlet that reported on this. And the purchaser has likewise zipped his cake hole. So again, we just don’t know. So it’s worth looking at it and asking the questions —that’s all.
Why? Because you have to question everything the Liberals do with our tax dollars. And as we’ve discovered, our tax dollars have proven to illegally benefit the Liberal Party and Liberal Party supporters themselves, in the past.
Raising cash in interesting new ways is very important to Liberals as we’ve heard from Justice Gomery. So is the concept of Liberals rewarding each other, and “entitling” themselves to their entitlements, courtesy of you and me, the idiot taxpayer.
That’s why.
“The transaction itself was conducted in a transparent fashion, with proper filings, proper disclosure,” said Valeri.
Well, yes of course it was Mr. Valeri. Buying and selling a house is nothing new, and why wouldn’t a fella be anything but transparent about it? Who even asked?
The question being asked is how it came to pass that Liberal-connected person bought it for double what Valeri paid for it. And also, why it is that Valeri failed to come clean about the matter and disclose the details of the transaction within 30 days, as he is required to do according to the Ethics Guidelines (to which it seems everybody except Liberals are required to adhere).
First the question of the value and how he turned a $275,000 profit in three months:
The previous owner said he obtained opinions suggesting that his asking price reflected a fair market value for the property. The Hamilton Spectator has the story.
“I had it appraised by a couple of different real estate agents and it was close to what I got,” said Leonard Davis.
[…] The 2005 property tax assessment for Davis’s former lot is listed as $201,000. The 2005 assessment for Valeri’s property next door is listed as $186,000.
Then how it came to pass that it was sold to a Liberal Party-connected (by way of his father) purchaser:
[Valeri] did not put the property on the real estate market, and he did not indicate how the purchaser came to know that Valeri was interested in selling the property.
[…] Joe Ng’s engineering company has been a long-time financial supporter of the federal Liberals, with contributions totaling at least $16,000 since 1993.
Valeri indicated that Joe Ng has contributed to his election campaigns in the past.
“Certainly I know that he has contributed to the Liberal party,” said Valeri.
Then of course it’s also important to note this:
[…] In 1993 … Ng’s engineering firm won a large contract in China, with the help of a $4.5 million U.S. loan from the federal Export Development Corporation to the Chinese purchaser.
Ng’s company also benefited from a special EDC loan in June 2002 to a Chinese bank that allowed Ng’s company to win a contract for a heating project.
Joe Ng has also participated in a number of Canadian trade missions.
He was listed as a participant in trade missions to China in 2005 and 2001, a Middle East trade mission in 1999, and a 1995 trade mission to South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.
So of course the last question worth asking is whether or not Valeri was getting some sort of a “Liberal entitlement” through this transaction, for some reason (and indeed what reason?). And of course the question about whether or not Ng (either of them) have or will receive some sort of a benefit from the government of Canada (taxpayers). And of course how all this is magically connected.
These are not accusations, they’re just questions worth asking, because he’s not telling us, and we just don’t know.
(Credit for the photo of the house: John Rennison, the Hamilton Spectator)
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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