Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Why did Mayor Karl Dean wait until after the agreement was reached to vet IQT?

From today's Nashville Business Journal:

The city’s decision today to abruptly cancel talks with IQT Inc. came one day after Nashville’s top economic development official said the city should have further investigated the company and its founders.

The announcement came after inquiries from the Nashville Business Journal regarding IQT co-founder David A. Mortman’s previous venture that unraveled amid allegations of securities fraud and disputes with investors in the late 1990s ....

Mortman — who co-founded IQT with his son, Alex — was president and chief operating officer of Global Intellicom, a $51 million, New York-based telecommunications firm that was involved in a number of lawsuits filed between 1997 and 1999.

The Mayor's Office told the Journal that they would have raised questions if they had known of David Mortman's involvement earlier. Was it not common knowledge that the company was co-founded by David and Alex? Does the Dean Team not look before it leaps into agreements?

They also told the reporter that they did not know about the Global Intellicom history. And is that supposed to instill public confidence that Karl Dean properly vets the businesses he lures to relocate in Nashville?

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