Wednesday, March 7, 2007

At the same time that N.C. Treasurer Richard Moore (pictured) sharply criticized payday advance loan lenders last year, he managed a state pension fund with holdings in as many as five companies in the industry.

The North Carolina pension fund that Moore runs may have invested nearly $11 million in payday loan lending companies, according to The Charlotte Observer. The fund has a total value of about $70 billion.

Moore’s office said that the fund has since sold its shares in four of the companies after finding them during a “routine review.” The treasurer’s office is now reviewing a fifth company, CompuCredit Corp., based in Atlanta, which operates one of three instant cash loan lending chains that agreed last year to stop making loans in North Carolina.

Sara Lang, a spokeswoman for the treasurer’s office, said that it’s difficult for the office to track every bad credit payday loan lender. The pension fund owns shares in about 7,000 companies. Lang added that Moore and his staff had for several years instructed the pension fund’s outside investment firms to not invest in payday lenders.

Payday lending has been illegal in North Carolina since 2001, but state officials last year closed a loophole that had allowed some companies to continue doing business here.

At the time, Moore criticized the cash advance lenders for giving short-term loans with the equivalent of annual interest rates of more than 500 percent.

“A civilized society does not allow these kinds of interest charges,” Moore said last May.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 4:06 pm and is filed under North Carolina.