| | | conservativereview.com
Illinois's richest resident, hedge-fund CEO Ken Griffin, announced on Thursday that he—and his company, Citadel—are packing up shop and heading to Miami, citing a better corporate environment and rising crime rates in Chicago.
The move, which Griffin announced in a letter to employees, will deprive Democrat-run Illinois of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income tax revenue, a company spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon.
Griffin alone—who is worth approximately $25 billion—pays over $200 million in state income taxes every year, the spokesman said, and Citadel employees have themselves funneled over $1 billion to the state over the past decade.
Citadel is the third major corporation to announce plans to leave Illinois in the past two months. Caterpillar said earlier this month that it would move its headquarters from Illinois. The announcement followed Boeing's decision in May to move its headquarters to Arlington, Va., from downtown Chicago.
Griffin's announcement comes as Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, faces reelection in November. Pritzker and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, also a Democrat, are grappling with a spike in violent crime. Murders in the city were up 60 percent in 2021 relative to two years prior, while shootings were up 66 percent and car theft was up 19 percent over the same time period, according to statistics compiled by the Chicago Police Department.
Griffin has spoken publicly about the rising crime rate and its impact on his colleagues. "If people aren't safe here, they're not going to live here," he told the Wall Street Journal in April. "I've had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I've had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that's a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from." |
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