A government watchdog, Campaign for Accountability, has called on the Biden administration to investigate the right-wing State Financial Officers Foundation for violating the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s pay-to-play rule.
From Rolling Stone’s reporting on Campaign for Accountabilty’s letter:
Campaign for Accountability, a progressive watchdog group, is calling foul over several red states’ decisions to prohibit BlackRock from managing state pension money over supposed concerns about ESG. The group writes in a letter to financial regulators that, despite their boycott of BlackRock, the states continued working with some money managers that have donated to SFOF and offer ESG funds.
“It does not appear that these firms, while sponsoring SFOF, were barred from managing state funds,” the Campaign for Accountability writes in the letter. Now, the watchdog is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an investigation.
The article goes on to say:
The Campaign for Accountability letter requests that the SEC investigate “to determine whether contributions to SFOF have led to preferential treatment of or influenced state financial officers not to divest from investment firms.”
The SEC’s pay-to-play rule bars campaign donations from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions, and it includes an anti-circumvention provision that additionally prohibits “acts done indirectly, which, if done directly, would violate the rule.”
The State Financial Officers Foundation has deep ties to right wing judicial activist Leonard Leo and Koch Industries, and primarily exists to attack ESG investing in the states at the behest of its wealthy backers. You can read more about SFOF here.
