Riegle Acknowledges Closer Connection to Lincoln S

WASHINGTON — Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), who has sought to minimize his ties to the Lincoln Savings & Loan scandal, has acknowledged a deeper involvement with Lincoln owner Charles H. Keating Jr.

Riegle, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and four other senators are the subject of preliminary reviews by the Senate Ethics Committee and the FBI because of their connections to Keating and their actions on his behalf.

Riegle was one of five senators who intervened with regulators on Keating’s behalf at an April 9, 1987, meeting about Irvine-based Lincoln.

That meeting, and a meeting a week earlier that Riegle did not attend, have become important to a congressional probe of Lincoln’s collapse. Their intervention has been blamed by some for the delay in taking regulatory action against Lincoln, which was seized in April amid charges of fraud and misuse of depositor money.

The Michigan Democrat has insisted that he attended the April 9 meeting about Irvine-based Lincoln only at the request of Senate colleagues who sought his presence as “a banking resource person.” Riegle has contended that he was basically a bystander at the meeting.

But Karolyn Wallace, Riegle’s press secretary, disclosed Tuesday that nearly a month earlier, Riegle toured the firm’s parent company in Phoenix. Two weeks later, on March 23, 1987, Keating sponsored a Detroit fund-raising luncheon for Riegle, she said.

Executives of Lincoln and its parent firm, Phoenix-based American Continental Corp., gave Riegle $78,250 in campaign donations at the fund-raiser.

Riegle returned Keating’s donations after it was disclosed by the Detroit News last year, saying he wanted to avoid “an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The previously undisclosed meeting between Riegle and Keating plus other recent revelations show that Riegle’s relationship with Keating were closer than Riegle has publicly indicated.

In addition to the newly revealed Arizona visit, Riegle did not advise the ethics committee of two other Lincoln-related contacts in the weeks before the April, 1987, meeting with regulators.

The other senators under scrutiny for their involvement in the Lincoln case are Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio).