California’s giant public pension fund, racked by criticism for the way it has managed a $205-billion portfolio, is preparing to disclose new details about the financial middlemen who play a little-understood and lucrative role in pension investing.

At issue are unregulated placement agents paid millions of dollars by private investment funds to act as marketing pitchmen to help get business from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS.

After a pension-fund scandal in New York last year highlighted the role of placement agents in bribery and corruption charges there, the CalPERS board ordered a review of the use of placement agents by roughly 400 private equity and real estate investment funds in which the California agency has invested.

As soon as this week, the agency is expected to make public hundreds of documents collected from the private funds that were asked to report the names of agents they have employed, the investments those agents promoted and the fees those agents were paid.

• Read the full Los Angeles Times story.