S L Owners

The Senate Ethics Committee, which appeared to conclude its investigation of the so-called Keating Five senators last year, apparently hasn't finished its probe of the Lincoln Savings & Loan influence scandal. The committee, which reprimanded five U.S. senators, is now looking into the roles that certain senators may have played in trying to help former Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. sell the Irvine-based thrift three years ago.

Whitewater defendant James B. McDougal, testifying in his conspiracy trial Tuesday, flatly denied the charges against him and insisted that his name was forged on critical prosecution documents. "I am innocent on all counts brought by the special prosecutor," declared McDougal, a feisty former savings and loan owner and onetime investment partner of President Clinton.

A federal judge on Monday refused to disqualify Charles H. Keating Jr.'s lawyer from defending the former Lincoln Savings & Loan owner on criminal charges of bank fraud and racketeering. U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer indicated that Stephen C. Neal would be able to continue representing Keating even though he previously had represented two co-defendants in civil matters. The two co-defendants--Keating's son, Charles H. Keating III, and one of Keating's sons-in-law, Robert M.

Beleaguered Arizona businessman Charles H. Keating Jr. won the right Thursday to a court hearing here on a portion of his claim that federal thrift regulators illegally seized control of his Lincoln Savings & Loan in April. Declining to rule on a government motion to throw out Keating's challenge to the takeover, U.S.

Equitable Savings & Loan Assn. has been sold for an undisclosed amount to a group of Northern California investors who promise to breath new life into the ailing Stanton-based thrift. The new owners, Vesteq Financial Services Inc. of San Mateo, replaced the previous management and plan to pump in $3.5 million in cash as well as $2.

The business manager and confidante of the owner of a failed Santa Ana savings and loan has been sued by federal regulators who allege she defrauded the institution of more than $21 million and caused its collapse last month. In a civil suit filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court, the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corp. accused Janet McKinzie and North America Savings & Loan's late owner, Duayne D.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) said Sunday he provided only routine help to a savings and loan operator who was paid $63,000 for doing $117,000 worth of work on the senator's vacation home. The FBI looked into the transaction but dropped the probe after the Senate Ethics Committee conducted a cursory review of the matter, the New York Times reported Sunday. The thrift owner, Texas businessman Jerry D.

How much did Hillary Rodham Clinton know in the early and mid-1980s about the troubled business dealings of her Whitewater partner and sometime law client, James B. McDougal? And did she play a role in his efforts to bail himself out? These questions have become an important part of the Whitewater controversy facing the President and Mrs. Clinton. And in the incremental way that the affair is now developing, new documents have surfaced that don't fit comfortably with Mrs.

Whitewater defendant James B. McDougal, testifying Wednesday at his conspiracy trial, altered his account of a 1985 conversation with then-Gov. Bill Clinton in which McDougal agreed to retain Hillary Rodham Clinton as a lawyer for his savings and loan. McDougal, who was the Clintons' investment partner in the failed Whitewater resort development, said he decided to retain Mrs. Clinton as attorney for Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan after Clinton stopped by his office in August 1985.

Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn. owner Charles Keating said Friday that the "conniving" of federal regulators and the guilt of Congress are to blame for the multibillion-dollar failure of his Irvine-based thrift. Keating said Lincoln showed a profit until it was taken over by federal regulators. "We had $700 million excess assets over liabilities in our subsidiary," he said on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America" program.