If federal regulators found out, McDougal's S&L could be shut down, since it had already been operating under orders to correct its lending practices.
[1][2][3] Seth Ward, an Arkansas businessman and Webster Hubbell's father-in-law, was hired by Jim McDougal to assist in land acquisition for the Castle Grande project.
[4] Hillary Clinton, a partner with the Rose Law Firm, worked with Ward on certain legal details of the project known as Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).
[5] Robert W. Palmer was the land appraiser for one of the Castle Grande loans, he later admitted to conspiring with Jim McDougal and others with Madison Guaranty savings association.
Kenneth Starr's investigators found that Palmer inflated estimates used to support loans made to Gov.
Jim Guy Tucker of Arkansas and an associate to buy a water and sewer system for the Castle Grande project.
Criminal referral on Madison Guaranty fraud loans were given first to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Paula Casey who declined to the seek prosecutions.
[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Since 1979, David Hale ran the Small Business Investment Corporation (SBIC), Capital Management Services, Inc., that was licensed to provide lending to minorities and the economically disadvantaged.The loans were matched and backed by the Small Business Administration (SBA).
McDougal then loaned his old friend and political mentor, Senator William Fulbright, $700,000 to buy out the bulk of Ward's remaining holdings.
The transactions were designed to be confusing to keep the regulators from finding Ward's loan and Madison's full investment in Castle Grande.
Jim Clark, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board Examiner-in-Charge at Madison, discovered that Seth Ward was behind the Castle Grande deal.
But later Rose Law Firm billing records were discovered in the book room family quarters of the White House.
[citation needed] Billing records showed that she charged Madison for about 30 hours on work with Seth Ward over 4 months in 1985 and 1986.
[24] Hillary Clinton told Barbara Walters on ABC in a Jan. 12, 1996 interview: "Castle Grande was a trailer park on a piece of property that was about a thousand acres big.
I was informed sometime within the last year or two that there was a trailer park on the IDC property called Castle Grande Estates.
To the best of my recollection, that was the first I had ever heard of Castle Grande Estates.She also claimed that she could not remember her work on the project nor 15 conversations with Hubbell’s father-in-law, Seth Ward.
[1] One of those questions concerned whether President Bill Clinton lied in his testimony during her Whitewater trial, particularly when he denied any knowledge of an illegal $300,000 loan.
The jury hung 7-5 in favor of acquittal for contempt of court, and found her not guilty on the charge of obstruction of justice.
He announced the discovery of the Rose Law Firm billing records and turned them over to the Whitewater independent counsel.
He visited the White House talked with Hillary and her lawyer David Kendall about the billing records.
At the Rose Law Firm he had been a billing partner and worked for on the Madison Bank & Trust accounts with Hillary Clinton.
At the White House he was unhappy with work in politics and spiraled into depression, and in July 1993, he was found dead of a gunshot in Fort Marcy Park.