In a recent development involving ACORN, Bank of America has “suspended current commitments” to the housing group affiliated with the organization whose full name is Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The news story was broken by the Wall Street Journal which reported the above-cited quotation from a spokesman from the bank who additionally stated that they…
“will not enter into any further agreements with Acorn or any of its affiliates,” pending assessments by the bank of the organization’s operations.
The full article, along with a video can be seen here. Additional video is below.
The affiliate in question as regards to the bank is ACORN Housing which is based in Chicago and approved by HUD as a housing counseling agency. As such, it has worked towards foreclosure prevention with banks including Bank of America. The move is in response to publicly revealed information about the conduct of certain ACORN employees who were secretly videotaped engaging in offering advice on various illegal activities including tax evasion, illegal immigration and prostitution. The article goes on to note that in addition to firing the employees seen on the video ACORN says it selected former Massachusetts attorney general Scott Harshbarger, to investigate wrongdoing in the aftermath of the scandal.
As pertains to the position of the bank on this matter, the WSJ quotes from a statement:
“Bank of America takes recent allegations made against Acorn and Acorn Housing Corporation employees very seriously.”
In response, the executive director of Acorn Housing, Michael Shea, is quoted as saying:
“We’re not surprised that our lending partners like Bank of America want assurances that this won’t happen again,” said which is based in Chicago and has about 250 employees nationwide.
As for other banks, The Washington Examiner reports on the response of Citicorp, quoting a spokesperson for the bank, Andrea Hurst who says :
“We are deeply concerned about the recently released videos of frontline ACORN staff, and we look forward to the findings of the independent auditor and a timely conclusion to this matter.”
The article goes on to note that JP Morgan Chase had a previous five-year commitment which ended in 2008.
This latest news reveals the yet another development in the aftermath of the scandal involving ACORN; Bank of America’s suspension of commitment, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
September 29th, 2009 at 7:24 am
“conduct of certain ACORN employees who were secretly videotaped engaging in offering advice on various illegal activities including tax evasion, illegal immigration and prostitution.”
This is an inflamitory statement and untrue. A few ACORN members were engaged in talk about those things by a pretend pimp and prostitute. Notice I did not call them a pimp and a prostitute.