Former Gov. Sonny Perdue is parlaying business information gleaned, and contacts made, during two terms in office into a new company called Perdue Partners.
The firm, incorporated March 22, will be “an Atlanta-based global trading company that facilitates U.S. commerce, with an emphasis on the export of U.S. goods and services through trading, partnerships, consulting services, and strategic acquisitions,” according to its under-construction website.
The business launches April 18. A reception will be held three days later at the company’s Buckhead headquarters on Maple Drive.
Perdue will be joined in the venture by three people he appointed to powerful state positions: David Perdue, a cousin and Georgia Ports Authority board member; Heidi Green, the former commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development; and Trey Childress, who is currently chief operating officer for Gov. Nathan Deal but will leave that job this month to join Perdue.
Neither Perdue nor the other partners could be reached for comment Friday. Bert Brantley, the former governor’s past and present spokesman, declined comment.
Yasha Heidari, a former legal counsel to the State Ethics Commission, said Perdue's business raises no ethical considerations. But he said it does raise questions as to the former governor's focus while in office.
“When you have the fiduciary responsibility for the public you are supposed to be focusing your efforts on the public,” Heidari said. “You just have to wonder if he was focusing on building this entity beforehand.”
Perdue ran his mid-Georgia grain and trucking businesses throughout his eight years in office, refusing to put his assets into a blind trust like previous governors. During his second term, according to documents obtained last fall by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Perdue and his companies’ employees repeatedly tapped the expertise of state workers at the Georgia Ports Authority and the departments of economic development and agriculture.
Perdue and two employees met with a half-dozen state workers at the GPA building in Savannah in September 2009.
In an email last August, a sales manager wrote that Perdue and associates were “laying the groundwork so that when the Governor leaves office they will be in a position to start up an operation.”
Perdue’s mingling of public and private business prompted an ethics watchdog to file complaints with Georgia's attorney general and its inspector general. Friday, Inspector General Deron Hicks said the case was closed because the complainant, George Anderson, had asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office to look into the matter. Anderson said the U.S. Attorney wasn't interested in pursuing the case.
Brantley said last fall that Perdue was simply gathering information available to any Georgian for his post-gubernatorial business life.
Perdue is one of Georgia’s largest independent grain dealers, with elevators in seven Georgia towns. The emails obtained by the AJC show that Perdue was trying to sell grain, wheat and soybeans overseas, China in particular.
His new partners should be able to help him. David Perdue, whose GPA term runs through June 2014, was CEO of Dollar General and Pillowtex and currently does business in India. Greene, who helped arrange meetings between Perdue employees and economic development staffers, traveled the world drumming up business for Georgia.
Childress also was the state’s chief operating officer under Perdue, supervising Georgia’s 50 state departments, agencies and their boards and commissions.
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