.. At the center of the dispute is a gently sloping, half-acre grassy lot on the shore of Lake Lyndon B. Johnson in the Texas Hill Country resort of Horseshoe Bay. The resort is owned by Doug Jaffe, whose family has long, deep and sometimes controversial ties to Texas politics.
Jaffe's company had sold the parcel to state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, a friend and political ally of Perry's. Fraser sold the lot to Perry for just above $300,000.
An appraiser hired by The News determined that the land actually was worth $450,000 when Perry bought it.
Perry sold the property in 2007 to Alan Moffatt, a British national who is a business partner and close associate of Jaffe's.
Moffatt, as the owner of an aviation firm, was questioned, but never prosecuted, for his company's international arms shipments to Africa in the 1990s.
He paid Perry $1.15 million for the parcel. The News' appraiser, who has decades of experience in Horseshoe Bay real estate, found that price to be $350,000 above market value.
Moffatt denied that anything improper occurred in the transaction. "It just happened that the governor of Texas owned that lot," he said. "It was a good deal for me."
If Perry was deemed to have received any gifts, he would, as a state officeholder, have been required to disclose them. He did not do so.
Perry has portrayed himself as one of the most financially transparent governors in Texas history, and has attacked Democratic nominee Bill White for not releasing all tax returns.
Republican Perry, running for re-election to a record third four-year term, has been criticized by political opponents, including GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for enriching himself via land deals while in office. ..blockquote>
