US/Azerbaijan: Lobbyists Continue to Flout Travel Rules - OCCPR
By Casey Michel
The scheme was simple enough.
In May of 2013, the government of Azerbaijan, via its State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), injected $750,000 into an obscure Texas-based non-profit, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan (AFAZ).
The assembly then flipped the funds into a series of secondary non-profits – a constellation of US-based 501(c)(3) organizations scattered across America, all pushing Turkic interests.
A few weeks later, nine members of the US Congress touched down in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, flown and feted by those very funds. And it was quite a gathering: sumptuous dinners, fireworks displays, gifts of hand-woven carpets, crystal tea sets, silk scarves, and DVDs praising the country’s president—all free of charge, and costing well in excess of the permissible limits of gifts to Congress.
As the Washington Diplomat related, it was “among the biggest concentrations of American political star power ever seen in the Caucasus.”
It was also, according to a recent report from the US’s Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), one of the most egregious ethics violations Washington has seen since the days of uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose rule-Flouting activities spurred the US’s last round of ethics reforms nearly a decade ago.
Per the OCE, the government of Azerbaijan and SOCAR appear to have secretly financed the junket for these nine lawmakers and dozens of staffers. And those scattered non-profits were but a group of middle-men, organizations who apparently deceived the House Ethics Committee repeatedly about the true sources of their funding.
But the debacle doesn’t end there.
The Ethics Committee is tasked with investigating lobbying and travel violations by members of the House of Representatives, and is made up of members of the House themselves. And despite being lied to by those pushing Azerbaijani interests, the committee has repeatedly stymied and stalled the OCE’s investigation.
The OCE, meanwhile, can only compile evidence from those willing to cooperate; its writ remains only as strong as the Ethics Committee’s willingness to enforce the rules. So when the Ethics Committee discounts—or abets—blatant abuses of a loophole, there is little the OCE can do.
“We haven’t seen this brazenness since the Abramoff days,” Craig Holman, a Congressional ethics expert with the Washington-based non-profit organization Public Citizen, said about the OCE’s report. “You’ve got a foreign government participating in trying to lie to the US Congress, and hoodwink the American public. … [And] the House Ethics Committee tried violating congressional rules and burying the OCE report.”
The report evokes the Abramoff scandal as it describes loopholes and organized deception, especially as it pertains to abusing 501(c)(3) organizations to suit lobbyists’ ends.
Abramoff, who served a jail term and has tried to redeem himself since his release by pushing for ethics reform, said in an email interview that the “practice of using non-profits to blur transparency for Congressional travel is not new, and is in fact something that I also did, unfortunately.”
Azerbaijan and SOCAR are not the only foreign entities to use non-profits to spend money on Congressional officials. The OCE report mentioned Turkish non-profits that cloaked their financial backers, much like Azerbaijan, and USA Today recently foundan additional 200 Congressional trips secretly funded by dozens of Turkish groups since 2008.
It appears far more common that lobbyists tied to foreign interests exploit this US loophole, rather than the foreign governments themselves. For instance, a 2011 trip saw dozens of US lawmakers tour Israel thanks to a non-profit closely linked to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group.
The scheme was simple enough.
In May of 2013, the government of Azerbaijan, via its State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), injected $750,000 into an obscure Texas-based non-profit, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan (AFAZ).
The assembly then flipped the funds into a series of secondary non-profits – a constellation of US-based 501(c)(3) organizations scattered across America, all pushing Turkic interests.
A few weeks later, nine members of the US Congress touched down in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, flown and feted by those very funds. And it was quite a gathering: sumptuous dinners, fireworks displays, gifts of hand-woven carpets, crystal tea sets, silk scarves, and DVDs praising the country’s president—all free of charge, and costing well in excess of the permissible limits of gifts to Congress.
As the Washington Diplomat related, it was “among the biggest concentrations of American political star power ever seen in the Caucasus.”
It was also, according to a recent report from the US’s Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), one of the most egregious ethics violations Washington has seen since the days of uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose rule-Flouting activities spurred the US’s last round of ethics reforms nearly a decade ago.
Per the OCE, the government of Azerbaijan and SOCAR appear to have secretly financed the junket for these nine lawmakers and dozens of staffers. And those scattered non-profits were but a group of middle-men, organizations who apparently deceived the House Ethics Committee repeatedly about the true sources of their funding.
But the debacle doesn’t end there.
The Ethics Committee is tasked with investigating lobbying and travel violations by members of the House of Representatives, and is made up of members of the House themselves. And despite being lied to by those pushing Azerbaijani interests, the committee has repeatedly stymied and stalled the OCE’s investigation.
The OCE, meanwhile, can only compile evidence from those willing to cooperate; its writ remains only as strong as the Ethics Committee’s willingness to enforce the rules. So when the Ethics Committee discounts—or abets—blatant abuses of a loophole, there is little the OCE can do.
“We haven’t seen this brazenness since the Abramoff days,” Craig Holman, a Congressional ethics expert with the Washington-based non-profit organization Public Citizen, said about the OCE’s report. “You’ve got a foreign government participating in trying to lie to the US Congress, and hoodwink the American public. … [And] the House Ethics Committee tried violating congressional rules and burying the OCE report.”
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