George Walker Bush Insider Trading Timeline [View All]

Bush Insider Trading Timeline

1986
George W. Bush and partners sell their failing Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. to Harken Energy Corp. Bush receives more than 200,000 shares of Harken stock and is made director and consultant to the company.

Harken’s CEO, Mikel Faulkner, introduces Bush to an old business associate, David Halbert, who is raising seed money to start up Allied Home Pharmacy. Bush becomes one of 30 initial investors who put up a total of $250,000.

1989
Harken sells a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, to International Marketing & Resources, a partnership of Harken insiders, through a seller-financed loan, but declares the profit in its annual report as a cash gain. This effectively masks big losses by the company that year.

1990
At the beginning of the year, International Marketing & Resources in turn, sells Aloha to Halbert’s Advance Petroleum Marketing for no profit. Advance now must pay the Harken-financed loan.

On June 22, Bush sells his Harken stock at $4 a share, for a total of $848,560. He uses most of the proceeds to pay off a loan he had taken out the previous year to buy a partnership interest in the Texas Rangers for $600,000.

On Aug. 22, Harken files a second quarter report disclosing for the first time that it is hemorrhaging. Total losses for that quarter are $23.2 million. Stock plunges to $2.37 a share.

That fall the Securities and Exchange Commission discovers that Harken had effectively concealed earlier losses in its 1989 annual report, before Bush sold his stock, by claiming a capital gain on the Aloha sale even though it was financed through a loan. It directs Harken to recast its balance sheet for 1989.

1990
On Feb. 5, Harken files an amended 1989 report, asserting that after “discussions” with the SEC about its method of accounting, it was recasting its losses for that year from a modest $3,300,000 to a whopping $12,566,000. But by then Bush had already sold.

1994
On July 22, insiders of Halbert’s Allied Home Pharmacy, now called Advance Health Care, hold a fund-raiser for gubernatorial candidate Bush, chipping in $20,750. Other contributions from those insiders that year bring the total to $23,700.

1996
Advance Health Care becomes a publicly traded company called Advance Paradigm.

1998
Bush’s trust sells his Advance stock. In his financial disclosure statement last year, he declares a capital gain of up to $1 million on the sale. It also sells his $600,000 stake in the Texas Rangers for about $16 million.

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