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In 2004, Mr Pruitt upgraded from the modest one-storey home where his family had lived for more than a decade to a $605,000 lakeside house a mile away.
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Two months after the deal closed in November 2003, Mr Funk attended a news conference where Mr Pruitt announced legislation that would make it harder for Oklahoma workers to claim certain kinds of injury compensation, something that would benefit companies like Funk’s. The sale price was not disclosed, but news reports suggested they paid more than $11.5 million, with Mr Funk carrying the biggest load. Mr Pruitt’s main partner was Robert Funk, the business magnate who ran Express Services, the staffing firm. Mr Wagner also purchased a small stake, and Mr Kelly’s bank provided financing for the deal, as first reported by The Intercept, which also disclosed the bank’s loans for one of Mr Pruitt’s suburban Tulsa homes. The commissioner dropped his plans for an investigation after state legislators, and the attorney general at the time, Drew Edmondson, pushed back against the effort.Ī baseball player in college, Mr Pruitt bought an approximately 25 per cent stake in the Oklahoma City RedHawks and became the team’s managing partner, making him a highly visible spokesman for the local team. But the vote itself was never overturned, and in 2003, another commissioner proposed reopening the investigation, claiming SBC still owed billions of dollars in refunds. In the early 1990s, an SBC lobbyist had been found guilty in federal court of paying a bribe to a public utilities commissioner to sway a vote that allowed the company to keep federal tax savings rather than disburse them to its ratepayers. The prospect of another investigation into a longstanding bribery case had especially rattled SBC. The deal came at a time when SBC was a major employer in the state and a lobbying force in Oklahoma City. In a statement, SpiritBank’s chief executive and president, Rick Harper, said the bank was legally prohibited from commenting on specific loans, but added, “SpiritBank is confident these loans were made in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.” The following month, SpiritBank, where Mr Kelly was chief executive, approved a mortgage in the amount of $420,000 in the name of Capital House LLC, another spelling of the entity. Mr Jiles was listed as a manager of Capitol House, and Mr Wagner as the registered agent. That December, Mr Wagner officially registered the Capitol House shell company with Oklahoma officials, and Mr Jiles transferred the deed to the newly formed company. Records show no mortgage was involved, and Mr Jiles paid $375,000 in cash. The next day, the relocation company signed the property over to Jon Jiles, a healthcare executive who has a range of business interests and made contributions to Mr Pruitt’s political campaigns. She was reimbursed for close to $475,000, the amount she had paid for the house in 2002, as her contract required, she said. In November 2003, Ms Lindsey signed the deed of the home over to a relocation company SBC had hired to handle her move and severance. The EPA spokeswoman did not respond to questions about Mr Pruitt’s disclosure filings in Oklahoma. Real estate records show that the transfer of ownership from Lindsey, the lobbyist, was rather complicated and involved multiple steps – none of them with any public reference to Mr Pruitt, although the EPA spokeswoman confirmed that he was one of five co-owners of the shell company. Oklahoma campaign disclosures filed by Mr Pruitt at the time made no mention of the home purchase or the rental agreement with Mr Dunlap. “This was a place where you slept and had dinner,” Mr Dunlap said. He was under the impression that Mr Pruitt had bought the home as an investment with a group of lawyers, he said. Jim Dunlap, then a Republican leader in the state Senate, said he rented a room from Mr Pruitt above the garage. The residence put him within walking distance of his job – legislators worked only part of the year, mainly from February to May – and also near SBC Bricktown Ballpark, which was home to his baseball team, the RedHawks, now known as the Dodgers. Mr Pruitt stayed in the house for parts of 20, neighbours said.