American businessman and politician, elected Arizona’s 19th governor and taking office on 6 March 1991, a two-term Republican and the second Arizona governor in a decade to be forced out of office by scandal.
An up-and-coming business executive, he joined Southwest Savings and Loan on 9 October 1972. On 8 April 1980 he organized Symington Company, specializing in commercial real-estate development. Within the next decade his net worth soared to $12 million. While governor in 1991 he was well into money juggling and telling different stories to different financial agencies. He was elected to his second term on 8 November 1994.
On 20 September 1995, Symington filed Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy, claiming $25 million in debts against $61,000 in assets. On 13 June 1996 he was indicted on 23 counts of wire fraud, filing false financial statements, attempted extortion and bankruptcy fraud. He was convicted of seven of the charges on 3 September 1997 in Phoenix, Arizona of lying to get millions in loans to shore up his collapsing real-estate empire.
He resigned from public office and on 2 February 1998 was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Having never gone to jail, his conviction was overturned by a San Francisco federal appeals court in June 1999. The appeals judge said that a juror who believed in the innocence of Symington was wrongfully dismissed during the trial’s deliberations.
Three weeks before President Clinton left office, Symington send his application for pardon directly to the White House. During a party in the ’60s, he had saved Clinton from drowning, and their friendship had apparently endured to good advantage, as Clinton signed a pardon for Symington on 20 January 2001.
Link to Wikipedia biography