Republican
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz‘s presidential campaign announced Tuesday that
Neil Bush has joined his finance team, even though Bush was involved in a
financial scandal that reportedly cost U.S. taxpayers more than a billion
dollars, and though he once admitted to sex romps in Asia during his divorce
proceedings.
A federal agency
ruled in 1991 that Bush, former President George W. Bush’s brother, had
multiple conflicts of interest while he was a director at the federally insured
Silverado Savings and Loan in the 1980s, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Office of Thrift
Supervision director T. Timothy Ryan Jr. said at the time that Bush “engaged in
unsafe and unsound practices and breaches of his fiduciary duties involving
multiple conflicts of interest.”
Bush improperly
hid his business dealings with some who were borrowing from Silverado, Ryan
ruled. Bush was ordered to follow strict rules of conduct if he ever worked at
another savings and loan association.
In 2003, The Washington Post reported that Silverado lent $140
million to Denver developers Ken Good and Bill Walters, even though “the two
men’s real estate empires were collapsing.” Good used some of that money to
invest in Bush’s oil exploration company JNB Exploration. (Walters had also given
JNB $150,000 in start-up money.)
“While serving on
the Silverado board, Bush helped arrange a $900,000 line of credit from
Silverado for a drilling venture in Argentina in which he and Good were
partners,” according to the Post.
Silverado
collapsed in 1988, and U.S. taxpayers lost $1.3 billion, the Post reported. “Bush became a public symbol of the $500
billion savings and loan scandal. Protesters picketed his home and pasted mock
wanted posters around Washington: “Jail Neil Bush.”
The financial
debacle ended up costing Neil Bush $50,000, but he was never charged.
A couple years
later, Bush caused further embarrassment to the White House after he “admitted
to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as
part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush,” CNN reported in 2003.
“The Bush
divorce, completed in April after 23 years of marriage, was prompted in part by
Bush’s relationship with another woman,” CNN added. “He admitted in the
deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips
to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.”
According to CNN,
Bush said that women “simply knocked” on his hotel room’s door, “entered and
had sex with him,” but he claimed “he did not know if they were prostitutes
because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.” After his
depositioner observed that it sounded “pretty remarkable,” Bush admitted “it
was very unusual.”
In 2004, an Associated
Press article called “Embarrassing Bush Divorce Papers,”
reported that Bush’s explanation was that “whatever happened, happened.”
