Did Daley's Son Make Big Bucks On Airport Wi-Fi Deal?

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Jun 6, 2011 9:30PM

The Sun-Times has discovered that Patrick Daley made $708,999 from Concourse Communications less than a year after it made a contract with the city in 2006 to provide wireless access at both Midway and O'Hare.

The Sun-Times writes:

Concourse disclosed its investors to the city, as required. Patrick Daley wasn’t one of them.

But he still had a stake in Concourse’s success, the company documents show, and profited as a result when the company was sold after winning the city contract.

Documents show that Daley received a number of payments from the company over the next few years, following its sale to Boingo, nine months after the wi-fi deal. Sun-Times investigated Daley's payments, but Mayor Daley's press secretary told them in 2007 that Patrick Daley “has no financial interest with the Wi-Fi contract at O’Hare.”

Furthermore, the wi-fi deal was part of Patrick Daley's work with venture-capital firm Cardinal Growth, who he worked with off-and-on between 2002 and 2009.

Patrick Daley’s payments from the sale of Concourse Communications ended in March 2009 — four months before Cardinal Growth received a subpoena from a federal grand jury investigating his and Robert Vanecko’s roles in the sewer-inspection business.

The sewer company’s president has since been indicted on federal charges that accuse him of minority-contracting fraud. Patrick Daley and Robert Vanecko haven’t been charged with any crime. Nor have Cardinal Growth or its owners been charged with any wrongdoing.

But WBEZ's Justin Kaufmann isn't afraid to ask the real question here, "Did the Daley administration straight up lie to the Sun-Times?"