[intro]Not $24 Million–but a Newhouse Loan Was Among Her Debts[/intro]

Gawker‘s John Cook, a wizard with documents, ferrets out the facts on the amount of loans owe by Annie Leibovitz to Si Newhouse. Again, the question raised is whether Newhouse is calling in loans from other Conde Nast notables that haven’t resulted in headlines?

According to a December 2008 mortgage document dated the same day as the loan from Art Capital to Leibovitz, Art Capital took over $15.5 million worth of various mortgages on Leibovitz’s Greenwich Village and upstate New York homes. It was that $15.5 million worth of debt, one imagines, that drove Leibovitz into the arms of Art Capital.

Which is why it’s stunning to discover that she owed half of it to Condé Nast, which pays Leibovitz a reported $2 million a year to take pictures. […] In Leibovitz’s case, two of the loans she has taken out over the years were from a company called Rhinebeck Properties LLC which, according to this document that handed over Leibovitz’s debt to Art Capital, is based at Condé Nast’s famous 4 Times Square address. The document is signed by John Bellando, Condé Nast’s chief operating officer. Another person who’s benefited from a Rhinebeck Properties mortgage is Condé Nast editorial director Tom Wallace.

Rhinebeck Properties held two mortgages on Leibovitz’s homes: A December 2006 mortgage for $2.5 million on her Greenwich Village townhouses, and a November 2006 loan of $4.7 million on her home in Rhinebeck, N.Y. All told, when Leibovitz did her deal with Art Capital late last year, she owed Condé Nast a total of $6.9 million—nearly half of her $15.5 million in outstanding debts.

All of this raises some questions: If the debt on Leibovitz’s homes amounted to $15.5 million when she went to Art Capital, why did she seek $24 million from them?

Did Conde Nast Call In Its Sweetheart Loan to Annie Leibovitz? (Gawker)