NEIL BUSH TIME LINE

1985

Neil Bush joins the board of Silverado S&L, serves until 1988. Silverado loans his partners in JNB $132 million which they never repay. Silverado will eventually collapse at a taxpayer cost of $1 billion.

1983

Neil Bush forms his first oil company. He puts in $100, his partners contribute $160,000 and Neil is named president of the firm, JNB Exploration.

1989

Neil Bush bails out of JNB Exploration, the firm where he became president with a $100 ante, leaving his partners to worry about its debt. Days earlier he forms Apex Energy with a personal investment of $3000. The rest of the money -- $2.7 million -- comes from an SBA program designed to help "high risk start-up companies." Like JNB, it proves to be just that. Apex will later go belly-up with no assets.

1990

Federal regulators give Bush son Neil the mildest possible penalty in the $1 billion failure of the Silverado S&L. The deal is so good that Bush drops his appeal. Among other things, Neil, as a Silverado director, voted to approve over $100 million in loans to his business partners.

1991

Neil Bush bails out of Apex Energy after collecting $320,000 in salary plus expenses. Bill Daniels, cable-TV magnate who has been lobbying against regulation of the cable industry, offers Neil a job. According to a representative, he "thought Neil deserved a second chance."

1999

Neil Bush makes at least $798,00 in three stock trades in a single day of a company where he had been employed as a consultant. The company, Kopin Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts, announced good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock value soaring. Bush stated that he had no inside knowledge and that his financial advisor had recommended the trades. He said, "any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information." When asked, in January 2004, about the stock trades, Bush contrasted the capital gains he reported in 1999 and 2000 with the capital losses on Kopin stock he reported ($287,722 in all) in 2001. [Wikipedia]

Bush co-founds Ignite! Learning, an educational software corporation. Bush has said he started Austin-based Ignite! Learning six years ago because of his learning difficulties in middle school and those of his son, Pierce Bush. The software uses multiple intelligence methods to provide varying types of content to appeal to multiple learning styles. To fund Ignite!, Bush raised $23 million from U.S. investors, including his parents, Barbara and former President George Bush, as well as businessmen from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, the British Virgin Islands and the United Arab Emirates, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Russian billionaire expatriate Boris Berezovsky, Berezovsky's partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, Kuwaiti company head Mohammed Al Saddah, and Chinese computer executive Winston Wong are documented investors. [Wikipedia]

2003

Washington Post reports that Bush's salary from Ignite! is $180,000 per year.

2007

Boris Berezovsky, a political enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin is under indictment for fraud in Russia and an applicant for asylum in the United Kingdom. Berezovsky has been an investor in Bush's Ignite! program since at least 2003. Bush met with Berezovsky, who has been described as "notorious" and a "wheeler-dealer," in Latvia. The meeting caused tension between that country and Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status. Bush has also been seen in Berezovsky's box at a British soccer stadium for a game. [Wikipedia]

NY TIMES - Ignite includes as investors his parents, former President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara. Company officials say that about 100 school districts use the Curriculum on Wheels, known as the Cow, which is a portable classroom with software to teach middle-school social studies, science and math. The units cost about $3,800 each and require about $1,000 a year in maintenance.