DATA: These IL Companies Got Millions In PPP Loans From The Federal Government
By Samah Assad and Chris Hacker
CHICAGO (CBS) — For the first time, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Treasury Department released state-level data about the companies that received loans under the Payment Protection Program (PPP) for COVID-19 relief.
As of June 30, nearly $22.5 billion in PPP loans was issued to Illinois businesses. That's more than 202,000 individual loans, an analysis by CBS 2 found.
The data shows nearly 4,000 businesses received loans of $1 million or more. Nearly a quarter of these loans, or 965, were given to businesses in Chicago.
The federal government released the names of all businesses who received loans of $150,000 or more. You can explore that data below and search by city, zip code and company name.
Data was also released for the more than 174,000 businesses who received smaller loans. The government did not release the names of companies who secured loans of less than $150,000. However the data does show Chicago businesses make up nearly 20 percent of recipients with more than 34,000 approved loans.
In a statement, Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the release of loan data "strikes the appropriate balance of providing the American people with transparency, while protecting sensitive payroll and personal income information" of small businesses.
RELATED: Some Public Companies In Illinois Received Millions In Federal PPP Loans For COVID Relief
But the release of the data comes after the SBA originally declined to provide detailed information about the loans following months of requests to the SBA from journalists and news organizations across the country. CBS 2 was among them.
CBS 2 filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April for loan-level data. Our first report uncovered some of the public companies that had received the loans. Our second report dug deeper into companies, including a Cicero-based energy company, that were able to get loans despite not appearing to meet SBA's definition of a small business.
National news outlets, including ProPublica, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, even sued the SBA for the information.
As of the SBA's latest summary report, more than $510 billion in PPP loans was issued across the country.
The SBA resumed accepting PPP loan applications Monday morning and will continue through Aug. 8.
