Thomas Demery | |
---|---|
Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | |
In office 1986–1989 | |
President | Ronald Reagan |
Preceded by | Maurice Lee Barksdale |
Personal details | |
Born | Thomas T. Demery July 18,1949 Detroit,Michigan,U.S. |
Political party | Republican |
Thomas T. Demery (born 18 July 1949 in Detroit,Michigan [1] ) is a former Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He served during the Reagan administration. In 1993,he pleaded guilty to and was convicted of accepting a gratuity and obstruction of justice during his tenure in government. [2]
Between 1972 and 1978,Thomas Demery was chief operating officer of Bloomfield Management Co.,a residents' property management company. After 1978,he worked as a licensed residential builder,real-estate broker,and mortgage correspondent. [3] : 13 During the period 1982–1986,Demery served as a consultant to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for technical analyses and reviews of selected HUD multifamily mortgages. [3] : 3, 8, 13
On August 11,1986,during his second term in office,then-President Ronald Reagan,after the resignation of Maurice Lee Barksdale from that position, [4] announced his intention to nominate Demery to be the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.). At the time,Demery was the president of Income Property Services,Inc., [3] : 7 a real estate brokerage firm in Birmingham,Michigan.
On 17 June 1993,Thomas Demery,after being indicted [5] on charges of lying to Congress and accepting a $100,000 loan from a Michigan developer whom he'd helped to get federal housing subsidies in the 1980s,pleaded guilty [2] to accepting a gratuity from that developer,and of obstructing justice. Demery was accused of steering $15 million worth of H.U.D. loan subsidies to the developer who had given him a $100,000 second mortgage on "extremely favorable terms" that was "never publicly recorded," as the indictment stated. [2] Demery received a $50 fine on each count and was subject to a 2-year probation period. [6]
In 1989,the Chicago Tribune reported that a charity which Demery had founded,"Food for Africa," had received over $290,000 in donations from developers and consultants who were connected with HUD projects. The newspaper suggested these donations had been made in return for federal subsidies. [7] A subsequent report issued by the department concluded that there was no direct link between the donations and the federal subsidies. [8] The report led to a wider congressional investigation into alleged grant rigging in the Ronald Reagan Administration. [8]
Demery comes from a family of Greek immigrants. [3] : 3 He has two children from his 1971 marriage. [3] : 6 He is a devout Christian and has been a Church Elder at the Bloomfield Hills Christian Church. [3] : 13
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