AFL-CIO boycotts Granite Investment based on Capital Consultant ties

The Oregon AFL-CIO is asking unions and union members to refrain from doing business with Granite Investment Advisors.

Granite, located at 4380 SW Macadam Avenue in Portland, was founded by former Capital Consultants vice president Dean Kirkland shortly after Capital was taken over by government investigators in September 2000. Top Capital employees were charged with defrauding clients — including several union trusts — of tens of millions of dollars.

Kirkland, Capital’s top salesperson to union pension funds, was convicted June 16, 2004 on 26 felony counts. Counts included: giving illegal gratuities to pension fund trustees in Colorado and Ohio; wire fraud for submitting false expense reports to his employer, and obstruction of justice.

His sentencing hearing has been delayed until February.

The Oregon AFL-CIO took the action to place Granite on its Unfair/Do Not Patronize List Dec. 17 at the request of Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 11 and United Association of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, two of a handful unions whose members lost retirement savings in Capital Consultants.

“We were all harmed by his actions,” said Local 11 Executive Secretary-Treasurer Debbie Sluyter.

Responding to the proposed unfair listing, Granite’s chief investment officer Roger K. Thomas wrote in a Sept. 13 letter to the Oregon AFL-CIO that Kirkland had voluntarily removed himself from the day-to-day operations after the conviction and was “in the process” of selling his shares in the company back to the Granite.

Sluyter responded to those claims with a letter asking for more detail about Kirkland’s involvement with Granite, as well as any other ties between Granite employees and Capital Consultants.

Reached by phone Dec. 20, Thomas declined to say whether Kirkland still had any financial interest in Granite.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.