Gov. Rod Blagojevich stood at the edge of a red carpet at the Springfield airport last week to greet the Emir of Qatar as he flew in for a private tour of the capital’s new Lincoln museum.
But it wasn’t just the allure of the sparkling new tourist attraction that brought Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani to the Illinois capital and his meeting with Blagojevich.
It was also Tony Rezko.
Since Blagojevich became governor, the 49-year-old Rezko–a Syrian immigrant, Chicago developer and fast-food magnate–has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in the administration of the first-term Democratic chief executive.
But Rezko, along with a close network of his friends and business associates, is also in the midst of the controversies swirling around the administration. And the relationship between the governor and the man Blagojevich describes as a “close personal friend” has come under increasing scrutiny.
One of Blagojevich’s closest advisers, Rezko helped select many top administration officials. He also serves as a personal sounding board for the governor and raised some of the millions of dollars that fill the governor’s bulging campaign war chest.
Even as Rezko’s ties to Blagojevich draw new attention, he is pushing the biggest project his firm, Rezmar Corp., has ever undertaken–the redevelopment of 62 acres at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street. Rezmar is asking the city for as much as $140 million in tax subsides for the project, which has some clout-heavy investors who also have links to the Blagojevich administration.
In addition to Rezko, some of the investors include Michael Rumman, the head of Blagojevich’s key administrative agency, Orlando Jones, the godson of Cook County Board President John Stroger, and William Filan, a lobbyist and cousin of Blagojevich’s budget director.
Just last week, Rezko and the governor’s office also acknowledged to the Tribune that Rezko, through his real-estate developments, has had a business relationship with the governor’s wife since 1997.
In recent months, those ties to the governor have come back to haunt Rezko with a spate of negative publicity. He has been subpoenaed to supply any records he may have as part of a criminal investigation into allegations that the administration traded plum appointments for campaign cash, several sources close to the investigation have said. He has not been accused of wrongdoing, and there is no indication that he is the target of the probe.
He has also been tied to businessmen granted lucrative new franchise restaurants at the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority’s new oases. And the city says he used a minority front to operate fast food franchises at O’Hare International Airport.
Speaking cautiously
Sitting in his offices on the Near North Side for a rare interview recently, Rezko–well dressed in a sharp, dark-blue suit, his hair and mustache perfectly trimmed–spoke cautiously about his relationship with Blagojevich, a relationship he says shouldn’t be viewed as controversially as it has been.
“I have done nothing wrong. I don’t understand,” Rezko said during his 2 1/2-hour interview. “I don’t do any business with state government and have stayed away from it since [Blagojevich] became governor.”
The negative publicity may be a mere bump in the road for Rezko, a millionaire who drives a black Mercedes sedan and owns an 8,500-square-foot historic home in Wilmette.
Since coming to Chicago 30 years ago, he founded the North Side real estate firm Rezmar–named after Rezko and partner Daniel Mahru–and opened more than 50 Panda Express restaurants and more than two dozen pizza places. He also has helped raise funds for a wide array of politicians and hired or done business with a range of insiders in city, county and state politics.
The public spotlight on Rezko intensified early this year after the Tribune reported that Panda Express franchises and Subway sandwich shops run by Rezko business partners had been granted lucrative rights to operate at newly revamped oases on Illinois toll roads.
In recent years, his firms also have been the subject of lawsuits, some accusing his companies of being slow to pay back loans for developments.
“I’m not going to lie that this is a perception, but that’s not the reality,” Rezko said. “These are disputed items. That’s why they are lawsuits.”
Rezko has close ties to a wide range of business leaders and powerful Chicagoans who continue to support him.
`Success story’
“Tony came to this country and made something of himself,” said Stroger, who was the beneficiary of a recent gala fundraiser co-hosted by Rezko. “He now is a great businessman in Chicago and is friends with a lot of people. He is a great success story.”
That story began an ocean away in Aleppo, Syria.
Born in 1955, a Christian in a Muslim-dominated land, Antoin Rezko attended an American school there and became interested in engineering. A teacher recommended he attend the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and before long he was there.
“Wow,” Rezko said of his first impression of the city. “I had never left my hometown before I came to Chicago. And here I was in this magnificent city with all these possibilities.”
Making connections
After graduation, Rezko met the son of deceased Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, Jabir Herbert Muhammad, who was managing boxer Muhammad Ali’s career. Jabir Muhammad and Rezko quickly hit it off, and Rezko soon joined Ali’s entourage, meeting heads of state and hashing out endorsement deals for the champ.
Some of those he met with Ali included leaders in Qatar, who years later Rezko said he would tap to encourage the emir to travel to Illinois.
“I would meet people in the region, and some of them I stayed in touch with. … When they come here, they call me,” he said. The emir “said he has never been to Chicago, never been in Illinois, and I asked why, and he said, `I had never been asked to come.’ So I said, `You have to see it. I’m asking.'”
Rezko’s link to Jabir Muhammad came under fire this year after Chicago officials alleged that Muhammad was acting as a front for Rezko, enabling the developer to control Panda Express restaurants at O’Hare that were supposed to be controlled by a minority-owned firm. The city’s complaint is pending.
Rezko said Muhammad was his entree into politics. After Muhammad encouraged Rezko to get involved in Harold Washington’s run for mayor in 1983, Rezko held a fundraiser to assist the effort of Chicago’s first African-American mayor.
`I liked the challenge’
“I liked the challenge,” Rezko said. “Less of that had to do with what Harold Washington stood for, this or that, and more had to do with the fact that nobody was giving him a chance to win.”
Rezko was hooked. He has raised funds for Stroger and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama when experts weren’t giving them a chance. He also has raised money for former Republican Govs. Jim Edgar and George Ryan, and in 2003 he co-chaired a $3.8 million fundraiser for President Bush.
As Rezko’s involvement in politics grew, so did his business. He graduated from building subsidized housing on the South Side to building $1 million homes. Rezko also hired politically connected insiders, including Jones, who once was Stroger’s chief of staff, and Terry Teele, a former top aide to Mayor Richard Daley who left City Hall after admitting he had arranged for personal loans from a lobbyist.
But of all the politicians Rezko has backed, he is closest to Blagojevich. They met in the early 1990s when Blagojevich was a state representative from a Northwest Side district.
“When his wife and my wife and the four of us would start socializing, we became friends,” he said. “Now his family is friends with my family, our daughters are friendly. It’s friendship. It was developed before he decided to run [for governor].”
Blagojevich has stressed that Rezko doesn’t offer advice on the governmental side, though he “does help me politically.”
And help he did. Rezko said he raised at least $500,000 for Blagojevich’s campaign, and after his victory, Rezko became a central figure in the governor’s kitchen cabinet of advisers, helping the incoming governor fill his cabinet and other key state posts.
Rezko declined to say how many members of Blagojevich’s cabinet or of state boards and commissions he has personal or business relations with. But records show he has ties to several Blagojevich appointees, including the heads of procurement, economic opportunity, housing and finance.
Also close to Rezko are two former members of a controversial state board that oversaw hospital construction. Both gave Blagojevich $25,000 contributions days before they were appointed to the panel, which has since been revamped amid a criminal investigation into its decisions.
Rezko insists that all the interweaving between state government and his business dealings is the result of business people living and working in similar circles, not cronyism.
“There were recommendations coming in from a lot of places. Did I make recommendations? Of course I did,” Rezko said.
Nevertheless, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine have opened a joint investigation into allegations that the administration swapped state appointments for campaign contributions. Rezko has been subpoenaed to turn over records for the probe, sources have said.
He `only wants to help’
Stroger said Rezko isn’t trying to get his political friends to help him. Rather, Stroger insisted, Rezko only wants to help them.
“Tony’s the type of guy who is always helping host fundraisers and getting his friends to get you money,” Stroger said. “But he’s real upfront with you, and I’ve never known him to ask for favors, which is unusual in this business.”
Still, a number of Rezko’s family members are on the county payroll, including his wife, Rita, who makes $37,000 a year serving part-time on an employment board.
Even when he was following Ali around the world, Rezko said, he managed to keep a much lower profile than he has now.
“I am a private person, always have been,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean that Rezko won’t continue to help Blagojevich win a second term next year.
“Rod is my friend. I believe in what he’s doing. I believe he’s doing the right thing,” Rezko said. “If he asks me, I will help. I will never walk away from friends. You can quote me on that. I don’t care. I’ll never walk away from friends.”
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jchase@tribune.com
