Charles Keating and Riesling Trail: Difference between pages

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The '''Riesling Trail''' is a 27 kilometre walking and riding track located in the [[Clare Valley]], [[South Australia]]. It runs between [[Auburn]] and [[Clare]], passing through several towns and villages along the way, including [[Leasingham]], [[Watervale]], [[Penwortham, South Australia|Penwortham]] and [[Sevenhill]]. Originally part of the railway branch line which ran between [[Riverton]] in the south to [[Spalding]] in the north, it was abandoned after the [[1983]] [[Ash Wednesday]] bushfires which burnt through the valley and damaged a lot of the trackwork. It was decided that the old railway lines would be removed and in the late 1990s, this part of the route was converted into its present use as a walking and cycle trail. Many of the original rails were sent to [[Queensland]], where they were layed down as tracks used for transporting sugar trains in the north of that state.
:''Alternative meaning: [[Charles Keating (actor)]]''
 
'''Charles H. Keating Jr.''' (born 1923 in [[Cincinnati, Ohio]]) is an American lawyer and banker convicted of fraud in the [[Savings and Loan scandal]] of 1989. A conservative [[Catholicism|Catholic]] active in the [[United States Republican Party|Republican Party]], he was formerly involved in anti-[[pornography]] efforts.
 
== Anti-pornography efforts ==
 
In the late [[1950s]], Keating founded the Cincinnati anti-pornography organization ''Citizens for Decent Literature'', later ''Citizens for Decency through Law''. In [[1960]] he testified against pornography before Congress. In [[1964]]-[[1965]], he produced the movie ''Perversion for Profit'' featuring announcer George Putnam. It is a survey of then-available pornography, and attempt to link pornography to the decline of culture and to the depravity of the youth.
 
In [[1969]], president [[Richard Nixon]] appointed Keating to the President's commission on pornography, which had been begun under Nixon's predecessor, [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]; he unsuccessfully attempted to stop publication of the commission's rather liberal recommendations with a restraining order. He then filed a dissenting report, stating "One can consult all the experts he chooses, can write reports, make studies, etc., but the fact that obscenity corrupts lies within the common sense, the reason, and the logic of every man."
 
Keating was also instrumental in the (rather ineffective) [[obscenity]] prosecution of [[Larry Flynt]] in 1976 in [[Cincinnati]].
 
== Failure of Saving & Loan, the Keating Five ==
 
Keating received his law degree in 1948 from the University of Cincinnati and started to work for [[American Financial Corp.]] Around 1980 he moved to [[Phoenix, Arizona]] where he ran the real estate firm American Continental Corporation. In 1984, American Continental Corporation bought the Californian Lincoln Savings. Such saving-and-loan organizations had been deregulated in the early [[1980s]], allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors' money. Some regulators noted the danger and pushed for more oversight, but Congress refused. Some of this may be due to the [[Keating Five]], five Senators ([[Dennis DeConcini]], [[John McCain]], [[Alan Cranston]], [[John Glenn]], [[Don Riegle]]) who had received some $300,000 from Keating in the 1980s. They later met twice with regulators who were investigating American Continental Corp. in an attempt to end the investigation. In 1990, they would be rebuked to various degrees by the Senate Ethics Committee.
 
American Continental Corporation, the parent of Lincoln Savings, went bankrupt in 1989; more than 21,000 mostly elderly investors lost their life savings, in total about $285 million, largely because they held securities backed by the parent company rather than deposits in the federally-insured institution, a distinction apparently lost on many if not most of them until it was too late. The federal government covered almost $3 billion of Lincoln's losses when it seized the institution. Many creditors were made whole, and the government then attempted to liquidate the seized assets through its [[Resolution Trust Corporation]], often at pennies on the dollar compared to what the property had allegedly been worth and the valuation at which loans against it had been made.
 
== Legal consequences ==
 
In [[September]], [[1990]], Keating was charged with having duped Lincoln's customers into buying worthless junk bonds of American Continental Corporation; he was convicted in state court in [[1992]] of [[fraud]], [[racketeering]] and [[conspiracy]] and received a 10 year prison sentence. In January [[1993]], a federal conviction followed, with a 12 and a half year sentence. He spent four and a half years in prison, but both sentences were eventually overturned.
 
In the [[1980]]s, Keating had donated some $1,250,000 to [[Mother Teresa]]; during his state trial, she wrote a letter on his behalf to presiding Judge [[Lance Ito]], saying that she was not informed about his business but she knew him as a man who was generous towards the poor.
 
In [[1999]], the [[9th US Circuit Court of Appeals]] in [[San Francisco]] ruled that the state trial judge had mistakenly allowed the jury to convict Keating without determining whether he intended to defraud investors. Thus the conviction was overturned; the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] refused to hear the government's appeal in [[October]] [[2000]], and state prosecutors declined to move for a retrial.
 
In [[1998]], the same Court of Appeals had ruled that some of the [[jury trial|jurors]] in the federal case might have been influenced by their knowledge of the state case and ordered the trial judge to investigate the matter; the trial judge then granted a new trial.
 
In [[1999]], on the eve of the retrial of the federal case, Keating entered a [[plea bargain|plea agreement]]: he admitted to having committed bankruptcy fraud by extracting $1 million from American Financial Corp. while already anticipating the collapse that happened weeks later; in return, the federal prosecutors dropped all other charges against him and his son. He was sentenced to the four years he had already served.
 
Keating remains unrepentant, maintaining that not his mistakes but regulators' actions were ultimately responsible for the losses.
 
== External links ==
* Keating's anti-porn movie [http://webdev.archive.org/movies/movieslisting-browse.php?collection=prelinger&cat=Pornography ''Perversion for Profit'']
 
[[Category:1923 births|Keating, Charles]]
[[Category:People from Ohio|Keating, Charles]]