Coingate Rolls On

Toledo Blade:

COLUMBUS — As multimillion-dollar losses by a Pittsburgh investment firm mounted last year, the chief financial officer of the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation told another top agency official that he had been told to “give MDL a break,’’ according to records released yesterday by Gov. Bob Taft.

The records stated that Terrence Gasper, removed from his post after the bureau lost $215 million in the hedge fund managed by MDL Capital Management, told a fellow official that the instructions had come from the former administrator of the bureau, James Conrad, who had been asked by George Forbes, a member of the bureau’s Oversight Commision, to go easy on MDL.

Mr. Forbes daughter, Mildred “Mimi” Forbes, is an executive with the investment firm.