Cruz Finance Team Member Neil Bush Had Multiple Conflicts Of Interest In 1980s Loan Scandal

Cross Posted from Daily Caller

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.”