A financial company headquartered in Los Angeles denied on Sunday that it had done nothing wrong that caused New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to withdraw as President-elect Barack Obama's Commerce Secretary.
Richardson announced his withdrawal earlier in the day, citing an investigation of the CDR Financial Products' business dealings with the state government he leads.
William Sisneros, Chief Executive of CDR Financial Products, said the FBI was looking at all of the services that CDR had provided to the state, and had found nothing.
The firm is suspected of winning state contracts that generated more than 1.5 million dollars in fees after donating 100,000 dollars to political organizations affiliated with Richardson.
A federal grand jury has launched an investigation into the scandal, in which financial companies make political donations to office-holders in order to be considered for government business.
CDR has never been charged with any crimes. But The New York Times and other newspapers have reported that the company has been closely linked with legal "black box deals" used by American International Group (AIG), J. P. Morgan Chase and other companies to sell municipal bonds that benefit the issuing companies, but rarely benefit the low-income people who are supposed to get help.
CDR's Los Angeles offices were reportedly searched more than two years ago in a federal probe of local government officials across the country who were getting financial help from agencies that manage sales of the agencies' municipal bonds. No charges were filed after that search, either.
On its Web site, CDR Financial Products describes itself as a capital markets service company that has put together more than 5, 358 bond sales totalling 158 billion dollars in transactions.