Waters, Tied to Bank, Helped Seek Funds

Top federal regulators say they were taken aback when they learned that a California congresswoman who helped set up a meeting with bankers last year had family financial ties to a bank whose chief executive asked them for up to $50 million in special bailout funds.

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks. Ms. Waters’s husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank’s board until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 of its stock.

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(Eric Lipton and Jim Rutenberg, “Congresswoman, Tied to Bank, Helped Seek Funds,” The New York Times, 3/13/09)