* He has a hideous driving record. Court records show that Hazelrig has about 20 convictions for traffic-related offenses. These include a DUI and a speeding ticket for driving more than 100 miles per hour.
* He has curious connections to the mysterious death of Alabama lawyer Major Bashinsky, which has been ruled a suicide even though there is zero scientific evidence to support that finding. One of Hazelrig's companies, W&H Investments, was embroiled in a lawsuit with the Estate of Sloan Bashinsky in the months leading up to Major's death. The elder Bashinsky had invested some $37 million with W&H, and his son's disappearance coincides with a lawsuit the estate filed in order to receive an accounting of those investments. Here is how we described it in an earlier post:
Court records indicate the Bashinsky estate never received much of the information it was seeking, but the lawsuit officially was settled on March 1, 2010. Two days later, Major Bashinsky was reported missing. His body was found floating in a Birmingham golf-course pond on March 15, and nine days later, authorities ruled it a suicide.
We might never know for sure how Major Bashinsky died. But we do know this much: An estate was seeking an accounting of Chip Hazelrig's investment records, and a member of the family wound up dead under horrifying circumstances. Since then, another member of the Bashinsky family, first cousin Charles "Bubba" Major, has died from a reported suicide. Bubba Major had publicly expressed doubts that Major Bashinsky actually killed himself--and now Bubba Major himself is gone.
That disturbing chain of events, whether they are related or not, started with a lawsuit against Chip Hazelrig's company, the source (we assume) of quite a bit of the cash he donated to UAB.
Does that trouble anyone at UAB? We've seen no sign that it does. Chip Hazelrig's check must have cleared, and that's all the university cares about.
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