A former employee of the financing arm of the Kushner Companies has accused Charles Kushner and his golden child, Jared, of siphoning millions from a huge real-estate deal into other holdings, including the New York Observer. Kevin Swill argues in a New Jersey legal filing that the elder Kushner funneled $5 million from the “complicated purchase” of the $1.8 billion office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue to the operations of the perpetually money-losing paper. The family denies that an undue transfer of funds took place. But Swill also has a more menacing accusation: that the Kushners diverted $300,000 from the financing to Mark O’Donnell, the investment officer in their company who happens to be the live-in boyfriend of former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey. You’ll recall that O’Donnell is famously paying McGreevey’s bills, as the latter is in seminary. Kushner had long been a McGreevey supporter even before the big homo ever got elected. Was this his way of paying the disgraced governor’s bills? “Not true,” protested a rep, saying that O’Donnell didn’t even have a working relationship with Kushner at the time of the alleged payment. “Not,” the rep added, “that there’s anything wrong with that.”*
Suit alleges Kushner diverted $5M to prop up N.Y. newspaper [NJ.com]
Related: Jim McGreevey and His Main Man [NYM]
*The rep didn’t really say that last part.
