On April 28, 2006, the Associated Press reported that Haley Barbour, the former RNC chair now serving as governor of Mississippi, had provided a $250,000 startup loan to GOP Marketplace through his investment company, HELM Partners, in 2000.[54] While he claimed that his involvement ended there and that he had no idea at the time that the company would ever engage in criminal activity, its operating agreement[55] shows that HELM retained a great deal of control over the company through a different class of stock and that Barbour's partner Ed Rogers had, as a result, equal control of the company with Raymond. Further investigations showed that HELM had only been incorporated shortly before GOP Marketplace was started and that the partnership never invested in any other company. Raymond also owned two-thirds of the company despite his initial investment of only $11,700.