Reid got $1.1 million in land sale

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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

In the process, Mr. Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.

The Nevada Democrat's deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in previous organized-crime investigations. He has never been charged with wrongdoing -- except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.

Land deeds obtained by the Associated Press during a review of Mr. Reid's business dealings show:

• In 1998, Mr. Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas' booming outskirts for about $400,000. Mr. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Mr. Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Mr. Reid supported. The seller never talked to Mr. Reid.

• In 2001, Mr. Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Mr. Brown. The senator didn't disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had a stake in Mr. Brown's company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.

• After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Mr. Brown's company sold the land in 2004 to other developers, and Mr. Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator's investment. Mr. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.

The complex dealings allowed Mr. Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Mr. Brown's company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.

Mr. Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview last week.

In a press conference yesterday in Las Vegas, the senator said he thought he had done nothing wrong but was willing to change his ethics report's account of the sale if the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ordered him to do so.