No. of Recommendations: 7
Brookfield Properties has had its share of bad p.r.
There was Mr. Market declaring that its real estate portfolio wasn't worth anywhere near the book value it was reporting, causing Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt to gnash his teeth, buy back shares, try to jawbone the valuation upward over the course of several quarterly earnings calls, and finally give up and take the whole thing private in order to take advantage of the "discount."
There was its 99-year lease of a Fifth Avenue office building where owner Jared Kushner was underwater, reportedly with backing from the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund, in which critics alleged Brookfield Properties facilitated a payoff to the son-in-law of the sitting U.S. president at the time, by a foreign entity with considerable interests in U.S. Middle East policy.
And now, just in the last few days, we have the indictment of a former top FBI counter-intelligence official on charges he accepted a payoff from a former Albanian foreign security officer and violated U.S. sanctions by assisting a Russian oligarch. Former Justice Department officials are all over cable news expressing shock and dismay at the alleged corruption of their former colleague.
Guess where Charles McGonigal went to work after retiring from the FBI in 2018. But of course. If you google "mcgonigal brookfield properties," the first result is a LinkedIn page identifying him as "Senior Vice President, Global Security & Life Safety · Brookfield Properties." If you click the link, LinkedIn informs you that page no longer exists.
On the bright side, Brookfield does not appear to have paid him enough to support his . . . uh . . . lifestyle. From a Business Insider account:
In September 2018, McGonigal left the FBI to work as a vice president at Brookfield Properties, a multibillion-dollar real-estate company. His salary there was most likely higher than what he made inside the government, but it wasn't anywhere near the C-suite or oligarch-scale money that courses through New York's penthouse condos and boardrooms. One law-enforcement source estimated that McGonigal stood to make roughly $300,000 to $350,000 a year, including annual bonuses. "He said he needed to make more money," said Guerriero, who was still in the relationship with McGonigal when he left the FBI. "He had two kids to put through college."As in the case of 666 Fifth Avenue (renamed 660 by Brookfield), if you put aside the disturbing national security issues, it's an entertaining tale, complete with a mistress-turned-whistleblower:
https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-mcgonigal-...I am thinking about applying for that global security job at Brookfield Properties. The pay would be more than adequate for me, and I'm pretty sure I could improve their recent record.
