AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Brothers Charles and Sam Wyly, born a year apart during the Great Depression, rose to the elite class of billionaires, A-list members of Dallas society who became regular donors to primarily conservative Republican candidates and causes.

Now, the brothers are together again — named in a federal complaint that accuses them of using offshore havens to hide more than a half-billion dollars in profits over 13 years of insider stock trading.

If the two are convicted, the financial fallout could affect politics, where Texas Republicans could see a huge source of political contributions wither.

In a 78-page federal complaint filed in New York City, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and “defrauded the investing public” by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks and using “an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies” offshore.

The brothers’ attorney, William A. Brewer III, branded the SEC complaint as “without merit.”

“They have never been given any reason to believe the financial transactions in question were anything other than legal and fully appropriate,” Brewer said.

Charles Wyly, 76, and brother Sam, 75, with their wives, have donated almost US$2.5 million to more than 200 Republican candidates and committees at the federal level over the past two decades, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The brothers themselves have said they’ve given about US$10 million to Republican candidates and causes since the 1970s.

In Texas politics, they give big, but quietly, Austin-based political consultant Bill Miller said Friday.

“Their profile is pretty darn low,” Miller said. “I’m not saying its invisible because they’re proactive when they play. … They’re out there, but they’re subterranean.”

The brothers’ website credits them for always embracing “the opportunity to participate in our nation’s political processes.”

The elder Wyly is a former member of a White House Advisory Council for Management Improvement. In the 1970s, Sam Wyly was a member of the Electoral College and chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Minority Enterprise during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Over the past decade, incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry has been one of the biggest political beneficiaries, receiving more than US$300,000 combined from td is politics, and one that’s more highly charged is political money,” Sam Wyly told The Associated Press in 2008. “People just love to write and read about it.”

In 2002, they each gave US$10,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority, the political action committee then-US House majority leader Tom DeLay and his associates used to raise and spend money to defeat Democratic candidates and elect Republicans to the Texas Legislature. DeLay and two associates continue to fight criminal charges related to that political committee.

Both Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush received donations. And the brothers helped bankroll the famous Swift Boat campaign that helped re-elect the younger Bush in 2004 by tarring Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry.