New York, Sept 08: Hastily written laws resulted in more than one third of the emergency grant money intended to help small businesses affected by September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York going to investment firms, financial traders and lawyers, a media report said today. It quoted lawmakers as saying that they had never envisioned this consequence of their laws and the intention was that most of the money would go to restaurants, pizza shops and other small businesses.
Apparently, nothing was done even when it became known that money was not going to small businesses as intended. The New York Times, which analyzed the grants, said 27 per cent, or 144 million dollars, of the 539 million dollar world trade center business recovery grant programme went to traders who work on the floors of the financial district's stock and commodities exchanges, to brokerage firms and to investment banks.
An additional 53 million dollars, or 10 per cent of the total, went to law firms, some of which employ hundreds of attorneys and generate yearly revenues of tens of millions of dollars, and few of which faced dire threats to their survival.
Far smaller amounts went to restaurants, retailers and other small businesses, many of them dependent on the foot traffic that largely disappeared from lower Manhattan after the attack.
Bureau Report