Rep. Gutierrez's corruption is shielded by public support in Chicago
May 4, 8:14 PM
Hector Alamo
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This week Chicago’s inspector general announced that the city will be investigating a program under which the daughter of U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez was able to buy a piece of property and sell it months later at a 55-percent profit.

In 2008 Gutiérrez’s daughter, Omaira Figueroa, bought a four-unit building in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood under a program that reduced property prices and designated them to struggling families. She bought the property for $155,000 and sold it for $239,900 in 2009, earning herself an $84,900 profit in the process.

Rep. Gutiérrez – who has served Illinois’s 4th congressional district since 1993 – has become an ambiguous figure in Chicago politics. The congressman is simultaneously the highly-popular spokesman of the city’s Latino community and the shadowy politician regularly suspected of improper practices.

He has been linked to a 2004 scandal in which he lobbied Mayor Richard Daley to okay zoning for residential development. A few experts at the time commented on the peculiarity of a U.S. congressman lobbying on behalf of a development plan outside his own district. An investigation revealed that Gutiérrez had received a $200,000 loan from the developer, Calvin Boender, just months prior to Gutiérrez’s personal letter to the mayor advocating the rezoning

Boender was later federally indicted in connection with the same development Gutiérrez had lobbied for – the Galewood Yards project on the city’s West Side. Although Gutiérrez was never indicted himself, Ald. Ike Carothers pled guilty to taking bribes in exchange for supporting plans to rezone the area for residential use.

And if any improprieties are uncovered as a result of the city's current investigation, it won’t be the first time the representative is tied to the practice of buying properties at discounted rates only to quickly re-sell them when market prices climb – a practice known as “flipping.â€