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Investment skeletons hiding inside Mitt’s closets - BostonHerald.com
GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has hammered President Obama for his administration’s tax-funded investment blunders — but when Romney was governor, the state handed out $4.5 million in loans to two firms run by his campaign donors that have since defaulted, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.
The two companies — Acusphere and Spherics Inc. — stiffed the state on nearly $2.1 million in loans provided through the state’s Emerging Technology Fund, a $25 million investment program created while Romney was governor in 2003 that benefitted 13 local firms.
Acusphere, a biotechnology firm headed by a Romney campaign donor, got $2 million in 2004 that it was supposed to put toward a $20 million manufacturing facility in Tewksbury, which never became fully operational. Calls to Acusphere’s headquarters in Lexington were not returned.
Spherics Inc., meanwhile, was lured from Rhode Island to Mans–field with much fanfare from the Romney administration, partly through a $2 million loan in 2005. By 2008, the company laid off all employees and completely shut down. The state received about $300,000 when the company liquidated its assets, but the firm defaulted on more than $1.5 million of the state loan, Abbruzzese said.
GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has hammered President Obama for his administration’s tax-funded investment blunders — but when Romney was governor, the state handed out $4.5 million in loans to two firms run by his campaign donors that have since defaulted, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.
The two companies — Acusphere and Spherics Inc. — stiffed the state on nearly $2.1 million in loans provided through the state’s Emerging Technology Fund, a $25 million investment program created while Romney was governor in 2003 that benefitted 13 local firms.
Acusphere, a biotechnology firm headed by a Romney campaign donor, got $2 million in 2004 that it was supposed to put toward a $20 million manufacturing facility in Tewksbury, which never became fully operational. Calls to Acusphere’s headquarters in Lexington were not returned.
Spherics Inc., meanwhile, was lured from Rhode Island to Mans–field with much fanfare from the Romney administration, partly through a $2 million loan in 2005. By 2008, the company laid off all employees and completely shut down. The state received about $300,000 when the company liquidated its assets, but the firm defaulted on more than $1.5 million of the state loan, Abbruzzese said.