Real Estate
Van Bramer drafts legislation
curbing insider dealing in real estate after reports
of Amazon employees buying LIC condos
Karling
Walter by Photo A BY BILL PARRY Queens lawmaker who has been out
front in his opposition to the state
and city deal that will bring Amazon
to Long Island City since it was an-nounced
Nov. 13, is acting on reports that some
employees of the e-commerce giant had inside
information to buy condominiums in the neighbor-hood
before the deal was announced.
State Sen. Michael Gianaris announced new legisla-tion
aimed at curbing such inside information in real
estate deals prohibiting anyone from using confidential
government information to buy or sell real estate.
“Trading on insider information is illegal with securi-ties
and should be illegal with real estate,” Gianaris
18 DECEMBER 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com said Tuesday. “No one should be cashing in on con-fidential
inside information.”
His measure would create the Class-E felony of
“Insider Dealing in Real Property” for those who use
non-public government information to buy or sell real
estate. Gianaris plans to introduce the legislation
when the new session convenes in January.
This is the second piece of legislation Gianaris
has announced aimed a curbing the lax regulatory
environment that led to the Amazon deal. He previ-ously
announced a bill that would prohibit the use
of non-disclosure agreements as part of economic
development negotiations.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that
Amazon employees were purchasing condos in
the neighborhood in advance of the company’s
decision to locate its HQ2 campus around An-able
Basin.
“We announced the location to employees at the
same time as it was announced publicly,” an Amazon
spokesman said. “We employ more than 4,000 in
NYC that live and work in the tristate area. Despite
multiple requests, the WSJ has been unable to
provide Amazon with any information regarding the
employees on which their story was based. Amazon
has no evidence that any employee who may have
made a property purchase in the locations before
the announcement had any advance knowledge on
the location selections.”
Amazon said its team involved in the HQ2 proj-ect
was very small and all of them were subject to
certain restriction.
/www.qns.com
