Senate Ethics Panel to Examine Loans From Countrywide

17 Jun 2008 // Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Tuesday that the Ethics Committee is examining mortgages he received in 2004 from Countrywide Financial.

“I’m talking to the Ethics Committee,” said Conrad, D-N.D., who, along with Banking Chairman Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, has been identified in published reports as being among a group of six current and former officials given unusually favorable mortgage deals from Countrywide.

Conrad and Dodd both have said they did not know they were given special interest rates and loan terms.

“If there is a finding here that I was given a gift, I’d be happy to send the money to Countrywide,” Conrad said.

The Ethics Committee operates in secret except in rare cases. There was no way to know how long its examination of the mortgage deal might take.

The committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer , D-Calif., studiously avoided confirming that a preliminary investigation has begun.

“Any time there is a complaint, we will look at it,” Boxer said.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the panel’s top Republican, said he could not confirm that an ethics investigation was underway, but noted that the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed a complaint.

“They just say they have a process they go through,” Conrad said. “And we’ve given them the information, and they say at some point they will get back to us on what their conclusion is and what they’ll want me to do.”

He said he gave $10,700 — the amount of the benefit he says he unknowingly received — to the charity Habitat for Humanity.

Conrad also said he paid off the remaining $32,000 on the mortgage on a Delaware beach home.

“My conscience is clear. I know exactly what I did. I know I did nothing inappropriate and when I found out that it appears that they waived one point, I’ve taken steps to make it right,” Conrad said.

Countrywide’s fortunes have fallen in the past year, as borrower defaults exposed lending practices that helped get people into mortgages with low initial rates that then jumped too high for borrowers to afford the payments.