Oops! Charlie Forgot This $1m House: Realty Bites Tax-Them-Not-Me Rangel
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Charles Hurt, New York Post, August 28, 2009
Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income—including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale—on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.
The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee—who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee—failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.
This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.
In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.
But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.
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Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.
Only in 2005 did Rangel reveal his total outside income.
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The Post revealed yesterday that Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes—for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.
Another area of wide discrepancy in his financial-disclosure forms is where he’s required to list financial transactions.
Every year between 2002 and 2007, Rangel failed to include all his deals for the year, according to records.
On his 2002 and 2003 financial-disclosure statements, Rangel did not include any transactions whatsoever, according to papers on file with the House clerk.
But the amended records filed this month show as much as $310,000 in business deals in 2002 and up to $80,000 in transactions in 2003.
In 2004, Rangel left off his disclosure form as much as $430,000 in stock transactions, amended records show. One of those deals he did include as a transaction on his original disclosure was the sale of the brownstone on West 132nd Street.
But in the same report, Rangel failed to include proceeds from that sale as outside income. That has been revised in the amended report.
Despite the reported sale, city records still show Rangel is the owner of that property.
His nephew, Ralph, who appears to live in the building, wouldn’t answer questions yesterday. Rangel’s office declined numerous requests yesterday for explanation.
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(Posted on September 2, 2009)