Representative Charles B. Rangel paid no interest for more than a decade on a mortgage extended to him to buy a villa at a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic, according to Mr. Rangel’s lawyer and records from the resort.
The loan was given to him by the resort development company, in which Theodore Kheel, a prominent New York labor lawyer, was a principal investor. Mr. Kheel, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to Mr. Rangel’s campaigns over the past decade, had encouraged the congressman to be one of the initial investors in the project.
The loan, which was extended to Mr. Rangel in 1988, was originally to be paid back over seven years at a rate of 10.5 percent. But within two years, interest on the loan was waived for Mr. Rangel and six other early investors because the resort was generating less income than projected, according to a statement released on Friday by Jose Oliva, director of the resort.
The loan remained interest-free and Mr. Rangel eventually paid it off in 2003.
As details about the financing of the villa emerged on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, through her spokesman, expressed support for an ethics investigation into Mr. Rangel’s failure to report rental income from the vacation home on his federal and state income taxes and financial disclosure forms. On Friday, The New York Times reported that Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had earned more than $75,000 in rent on the vacation home since 1988, and according to his lawyers probably owed back taxes to New York State and New York City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/nyregion/06rangel.html?hp
