Miami Daily

One of the amazing men at the middle of US Century, the tottering Miami bank got above $50 million as TARP money called as Sergio Pino. Pino came from Cuba as a refugee in Miami and changed himself as a multimillionaire. He has become a hot cake in Miami politics and business.

In spite of frequent emailed questions and request, Pino could not give time to talk to ProPublica. Pino was never punished against any type of wrongdoing.

Pino was the vice chairman of United States Century's board of directors. Most of the banks have decided to provide him any kind of financial loan as well as to other members from his family and even to those companies where they are working on.

Pino's family left Cuba headed up for Miami during 1969; Pino was a young boy at that time, which was revealed by local news accounts. Pino started his career at the age of 20 in Miami. He used to work as a plumbing seller. He and his father started a company during 1977, giving a name Century Plumbers Wholesale, which can be seen in its website.

He worked in an influential Florida construction trade group as president, which was the Latin Builders Association. Pino decided to go for real-estate construction and development in 1997, and started forming a team named Century Partners. Now Pino works as a senior real estate and home developer around Miami-Dade County.

He is the most popular personality around South Florida as well as in Washington with the name of both a bundler of contributions and creative political donor. No facts has propounded yet about political donations led TARP loan of United States Century.

Pino’s campaign contributions as well as the benefited local representatives have generous on him as well as on his business friends have took him in many controversies. The Miami-Dade County examiner general argued on the Miami Airport Duty Free Joint Venture in 2002, and Pino played vital role as an investor in that survey.

The joint firm got success to contract for operation partially because of its minority ownership around Miami International Airport. During that inspection, an inspector general declared that the 4 minority friends of that joint venture had been paid of $14.6 million against not performing much substantive job but simply working as a first line in order to fulfill the county’s needs according to the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise project.