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NUMBER 106 - JULY 16, 2019

SOME PEOPLE MIGHT THINK THAT THE BIGGEST LIFE LESSON THAT FRANCIS SUAREZ LEARNED FROM DADDY X WAS NOT TO GET CAUGHT IN AN ABSENTEE BALLOT FRAUD SCHEME - ALTHOUGH HE ALMOST MANAGED TO DO THAT IN 2013 - BUT THERE ARE A FEW OTHER LESSONS THAT JUNIOR SEEMS TO HAVE LEARNED FROM DADDY, INCLUDING PLAYING CUTE WITH HIS ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORTS

Last week, when I wrote my story about Miami Mayor Francis Suarez's annual financial reports, one of the interesting things that I mentioned was that Francis Suarez had included as a liability a $40,000 loan he had gotten from his father.

Just on it's own, I thought that pretty strange,  because why would the Mayor of Miami who gets paid $97,000, plus benefits, and allegedly collects $300,000 a year from the law firm Greenspoon Marder where he is currently doing who knows what, need to "borrow" $40,000 from Daddy?

That loan got me to go and look at Xavier Suarez's annual financial reports, first to see if he was rich enough to loan Junior $40,000, and secondly, to see if he had included this loan in his own financial report for 2018.

Here's what I found.

First, Xavier's got terrible hand writing, and he really should have the information on these forms typed in.

Secondly, like his son, he's carrying a load of debt, with very little in the way of reported income to cover it.

As assets, Xavier listed his home and two condos in a building on Miami Beach totalling an estimated $1,760,000 in value. He also listed $90,000 in the county's pension plan and another $90,000 in a CD.  

As income, he listed $100,000 from the law firm he works for and $36,000 in salary as a county commissioner. He didn't list any other sources of income, such as rental income from the condos, or any proceeds from stocks, bonds, or even an advance or royalties from the publisher of the book he wrote last year about the universe.

Neither did he include how much money, if any, he had in a checking or savings account, or even reveal that he had either.

Nowhere did he include any mention of the $40,000 loan that his son claimed he gave him.

So much for transparency from the guy who impressed Manuel Yip so much that he voted for Xavier from the grave.

Here's a copy of Xavier's FORM 6.

Copyrighted:  2011,2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

The transparency, or lack of that is exhibited by elected officials in both the city and the county when it comes to providing accurate financial information reveals how devious and calculating some of them are, and more importantly reveals how useless these reports are without there being some process of review or penalty for failing to tell the truth. (You can look at Xavier's past FORM 6's HERE, and you can look at the FORM 6's of the other County Commissioners HERE, to appreciate the wide discrepancy in how they interpet the requirements to reveal their financial situation.)

In an unintended way, these reports also reveal what I suspect is a reliance on websites like Zillow who have created algorithms to calculate  daily changes in property values that is fueling an inflated and unsupportable increase in these values that can only result is bad news down the road.

For instance, in his latest financial reports Francis Suarez claimed that the house that he and his wife own in Coral Gate increased in value from $320,575 in 2017, to $550,000 in 2018.

What exterior changes to the city and the neighborhood could make that happen?

If some people, and Francis Suarez seems to be one of those people, turned around and used that increased valuation to cash in by taking money out through a home equity loan - in Francis' case it seems that he increase by $80,000 his mortgage liability on that house in this year's report - then when the market drops, which everyone predicts will happen, then those folks, Suarez included, are going to be in trouble when that happens.

The issue of inflated real estate properties however, is secondary to the real question that the revelation of the loan that Francis Suarez claimed he got from his father raises, and that is, why would he need to borrow $40,000 from his father?

What's up with that, bitches?