Wells Fargo and subsidiaries of Sun Life Financial and investment firm P10 have agreed to pay a combined $5.5 million to settle a claim that they inflated the cost of community development projects in Oregon to boost their benefit from a state tax credit program.
The three were found to have been “vastly inflating” the cost of opening dental clinics in rural parts of the state so they could increase receipts from Oregon’s since-lapsed New Markets Tax Credit program, says Brian de Haan, Oregon senior assistant attorney general, who led an investigation into the firms.
New Orleans-based Enhanced Capital, which was acquired by P10 in 2020, is one of the nation’s three big CDEs that have played a dominant role in the state programs, according to Rutgers University public policy professor Julia Sass Rubin. The others are Advantage Capital of St. Louis and Baton Rouge-based Stonehenge Capital.