At the same time that Guyanese-born businessman Edul Ahmad gave Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) an unsecured $40,000 personal loan, he was pleading poverty to state authorities who had suspended his real estate license, according to Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein in yesterday’s New York Post.
Meeks failed to report the 2007 loan on his annual financial disclosure report, that all member of Congress are required to file, until June of this year after the FBI reportedly started asking questions about the loan. Meeks has repeatedly referred to Ahmad as his “friend,” but when asked by the New York Post last month what his relationship was with Meeks, Ahmad said, “I have none.”
Yesterday’s Post story paints a picture of Ahmad as a “shady” operator, with real estate dealings in Queens, and a variety of other businesses. According to the Post:
Ahmad lives the high life in a McMansion in South Ozone Park. His fleet of cars over the last few years has included a 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo — with a base price of $165,000 — a 2003 Mercedes SL500R roadster and a succession of Range Rovers.
Yet, Ahmad cried poverty in legal papers filed in 2008 as part of the license-suspension case.
He claimed that even before the case began — around the same period he gave the $40,000 to Meeks — his business was “struggling because of the real-estate crisis and the economy.”
Ahmad is said to be close to Meeks, a New York State Senator named John Sampson, and Bharrat Jagdeo, the president of Guyana. Jagdeo was educated in the Soviet Union and has strengthened his nation’s ties with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and the government of Iran.
Related:
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Rep. Gregory Meeks Attacks the Wrong Peter Flaherty
NLPC Complaint Alleges Rep. Gregory Meeks Got Sweetheart Deal on Home
High-Living Congressman Meeks Blames NLPC for Scrutiny