S&L; Buyers Made Big Gifts to Lawmakers : Thrifts: Donations coincided with deals that may cost U.S. $73 billion. Group says regulators won’t release data that might indicate scandal.

Investors who took over failed savings and loans in a series of quick deals in 1988--transactions that cost the federal government billions of dollars--made large campaign contributions to key members of Congress at the time, according to a study released Tuesday.

The Center for the Study of Responsive Law, a Washington organization affiliated with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, charged that federal regulators have refused to release documents that might shed more light on the bidding process for the S&Ls; sold in 1988.

Unless that information is released by the Office of Thrift Supervision, the center’s analysts said, it will be impossible to tell whether regulators are hiding evidence of another thrift-related scandal like the “Keating Five” scandal. That case led to a Senate ethics investigation of whether five senators had intervened improperly with regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr., owner of failed Lincoln Savings & Loan of Irvine.

The center’s study estimates that the deals made by regulators in the final weeks of 1988 to sell off 192 failed thrifts have cost taxpayers $73 billion, not including the tax benefits the buyers received for acquiring the institutions.

Individuals and political action committees with ties to the companies or investors who bought the failed thrifts from the government in 1988 contributed a total of $2.8 million to presidential and congressional candidates in 1987 and 1988, the study found. Included in the total was $68,875 in contributions to the 1988 presidential campaign of President Bush.

Key members of the House and Senate Banking committees, the panels that deal most directly with the thrift crisis, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from winning bidders for thrifts during both 1987 and 1988, the study showed. House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee members received a total of $298,200; Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee members received $229,199.

Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate committee and one of the senators reprimanded in the “Keating Five” inquiry, received $39,950 in contributions from winning bidders during 1987 and 1988, the study reported.

California Gov. Pete Wilson, who was in the Senate at the time, received $33,332, the study showed, but Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), another reprimanded “Keating Five” senator and a member of the Senate banking panel, received just $1,000.

In a flurry of activity timed to take advantage of expiring tax breaks, investors grabbed up thrifts from federal regulators in the final few weeks of 1988. Government regulators, eager to dump the S&Ls; at a time when the deposit insurance fund covering customer deposits in thrifts was bankrupt, sold them to investors at what critics contend were bargain prices.

Some buyers, including private investors, commercial banks and large thrifts, bought several failed institutions apiece.

At the same time, many of the most successful purchasers made huge campaign contributions, spread around Congress and to presidential contenders in 1988.

One thrift buyer, Barnett Banks of Florida, made $377,700 in campaign contributions through its political action committee, according to the report. Ronald O. Perelman, owner of Revlon Inc. and a wealthy private investor, contributed $36,500, while former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, who was involved in winning S&L; bids, contributed $16,500, the study showed. Perelman and other investors and political action committees involved in just one costly 1988 deal contributed a total of $191,000 to various political campaigns.