I recently wrote about the ludicrous land valuations assigned to the Business Pork’s three tracts under development. The LEDC hired CBRE to do the appraisals and the price per acre they came up with was about 5x higher than anything in the surrounding area.
I have been digging around trying to find out who the hell CBRE is – I had never heard of them. I was thinking maybe it was a small company run by Misti Talbert’s brother-in-law or Mandy Walsh’s uncle or something.
Then I found this:
Credit Suisse nears $360 million deadline in fraud suit built on a hunch
I’ll let you go ahead and read it, but here is a nugget:
As a first step, the law firm filed a lawsuitaccusing the appraiser, CBRE, of artificially inflating land valuesand sales projections. In discovery, the firm obtained Credit Suisse’s communications about those appraisals.
Highland settled its lawsuit against CBRE, which did not admit liability, in 2013, but materials obtained during discovery emboldened the company to also sue Credit Suisse.
An original, lower appraisal by CBRE had been changed after pressure from Credit Suisse, Highland alleged.
The assertion was based in part on communication between CBRE appraiser William Acton and Credit Suisse’s Arik Prawer, one of the Credit Suisse bankers involved with the deal.
Wow.
Oh, and they were also sued for bid rigging in another case!
CBRE rigged bidding for a bank branch, fraud lawsuit alleges
I wondered why the LEDC used this CBRE company to appraise the land, when they had PREVIOUSLY used Herbst Real Estate to appraise this EXACT SAME LAND back in 2012.
I still don’t know why. Perhaps the LEDC can explain it to us someday.