A sunrise is reflected in the Flame Towers in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan secretly funded an all-expenses-paid trip to a conference at Baku on the Caspian Sea in 2013 for 10 members of Congress and 32 staff members, according to a confidential ethics report obtained by The Washington Post. Three former top aides to President Obama appeared as speakers at the conference.
Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses cost $112,899, travel invoices show.
The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as SOCAR, allegedly funneled $750,000 through nonprofit corporations based in the United States to conceal the source of the funding for the conference in the former Soviet nation, according to the 70-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative arm of the House.
The report reflects the most extensive investigation undertaken by the ethics office, which was created seven years ago in response to a number of scandals on Capitol Hill, including lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s illegal funding of lawmakers’ trips.
The nonprofit corporations allegedly filed false statements with Congress swearing that they were sponsoring the conference. The findings have been referred to the House Committee on Ethics for investigation of possible violations of congressional rules and federal laws that bar foreign governments from trying to influence U.S. policy.
[This article will be updated with responses as they are provided to The Post.]
The conference, titled U.S.-Azerbaijan Convention: Vision for the Future, took place on May 28 and 29, 2013. During the previous year, SOCAR and several large energy companies sought exemptions for a $28 billion natural gas pipeline project in the Caspian Sea from U.S. economic sanctions being imposed on Iran.
The congressional investigators could not determine whether lawmakers used their official positions to benefit SOCAR or the pipeline project. They also found no evidence that the lawmakers or their staffers knew that the conference was being funded by a foreign government.
The investigators noted that the lawmakers relied on representations made to them by two Houston-based nonprofit corporations, the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians (TCAE) and the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan (AFAZ). The lawmakers told investigators that they had obtained approval for the trip from the ethics committee.
The report said members of the House Ethics Committee wrote to the Office of Congressional Ethics requesting a halt to their investigation so that the matter could be taken up by their own committee. OCE officials declined the request. A government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said OCE feared that the ethics panel,which has a reputation among watchdog groups for shielding lawmakers from embarrassing disclosures, would not take any meaningful action.
The Flame Towers and Port Baku are lit up at night in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Christopher Lee/Getty Images)
The pipeline has long been an important U.S. policy objective because it would bolster European security by offering an alternative to Russian gas.
One of SOCAR’s partners was the National Iranian Oil Company, known as NIOC, a relationship that had threatened to scuttle the deal if sanctions were approved without an exemption for the Shah Deniz Natural Gas Project. SOCAR and NIOC each were partners with 10 percent of the project, while BP and Norwegian-based Statoil each held 25.5 percent. Russian-based Lukoil also had a 10 percent share and Turkish Petroleum Corp. had 9 percent.
Congress had approved two sanctions bills containing passages that exempted the project, which Obama signed into law in August 2012 and January 2013. On June 3, 2013, five days after the Baku conference, Obama signed an executive order assessing economic sanctions against Iran that also exempted the project.
The Post reported about the trip at the time, in an article noting that three former Obama political advisers — Robert Gibbs, Jim Messina and David Plouffe — spoke at the conference, which was attended by current and former members of Congress. Politico also wrote about the trip and the Houston Chronicle reported that SOCAR had been a sponsor of the conference and raised questions about the nonprofits involved. Only one Western news organization covered the event, the Washington Diplomat, a monthly that writes about the diplomatic community in the nation’s capital.
But no information surfaced at the time about the alleged $750,000 payment from SOCAR to the nonprofits. Ethics investigators obtained a wire transfer showing that SOCAR sent the $750,000 to AFAZ. SOCAR’s legal counsel told the investigators that the money was “dues” that were “intended to be used as funding for the Convention.”
The lawmakers who took the trip were Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Rubén Hinojosa (D-Tex.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), Ted Poe (R-Tex.) and then-Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.).
Clarke is a member of the Ethics Committee.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), attended as part of a separate congressional delegation and his expenses were not paid by the conference, according to the report.
Lawmakers said they were unaware
Lawmakers told investigators that they were unaware that the Azerbaijani government had underwritten the trip through its oil company, but the investigators noted that SOCAR organized much of the conference in plain sight. The oil company issued invitations, sponsored visa entries for the lawmakers and staff members, and hung banners and placards emblazoned with SOCAR’s logo throughout the conference halls in Baku.
The investigators concluded in their report that “a person’s ignorance of the true source of travel expenses is not an absolute shield from liability for receipt of travel expenses from an improper source.”
Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has oversight of U.S. relations with Iran and the economic sanctions, attended the conference. They included one of the panel’s most influential members, Poe, who chairs its subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade.
The report said Poe was among those who did not fully cooperate with ethics investigators or did not acknowledge receipt of their request for information.
According to the report, three other lawmakers who took the trip also declined to cooperate with the ethics office or did not respond: Jackson Lee, a member of the Homeland Security Committee; Lance, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee; and Meeks, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Those who went to the conference and cooperated with the investigation said they thought the nonprofit corporations had funded the trip and reported their travel expenses on their disclosure forms. Several said they believed they did not need to disclose the gifts because their value did not exceed the $350 reporting threshold.
Lujan Grisham told ethics investigators that she did not disclose the rugs because she did not think they were particularly valuable. She also thought that they were unattractive.
“It’s not a carpet I would have purchased,” the congresswoman said.
In recent years, as relations between the United States and Iran have deteriorated over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Congress and the Obama administration have stepped up economic sanctions. The government of Azerbaijan, which shares a border with Iran, hired several lobbying firms to build a better relationship with policymakers in Washington.
Considering new sanctions
As Congress weighed a new round of sanctions against Iran in 2012, SOCAR opened an office in Washington, buying a building in Dupont Circle for $12 million. On April 25 and 26, 2012, a conference called U.S.-Azerbaijan Relations: Vision for Future was held at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in downtown Washington.
Among the attendees were Poe, Meeks, and Jackson Lee. Ethics investigators said it appeared that SOCAR was a “major funder” of the conference, citing interviews and photographs published on a Web site for the event that showed banners with SOCAR’s logos inside the hotel.
At the time, Congress was considering the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act. The bill contained a provision that would exempt the gas pipeline project from Iranian sanctions. The provision said that “nothing” in the measure would apply to “the development of natural gas and the construction and operation of a pipeline to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and Europe.”
Three months later, on July 30, 2012, Obama signed an executive orderauthorizing additional sanctions against Iran and exempting the pipeline. On Aug. 1, Congress approved the sanctions legislation and the exemption. Obama signed it into law nine days later.
Before adjourning for Christmas, Congress approved another sanctions bill called the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act, which was part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. That bill also contained an exemption for the gas pipeline. On Jan. 2, 2013, Obama signed the legislation into law.
Soon, members of Congress began receiving invitations to attend a springtime conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan known for its mix of medieval architecture and gleaming modern buildings along the shores of the Caspian Sea.
A month before the conference, the nonprofit AFAZ was set up in Houston, home to some of the world’s largest energy companies. AFAZ was created as an “educational, cultural, business, congressional advocacy and charitable organization” with the mission of building “bridges between the United States and Azerbaijan,” according to the nonprofit’s Web site.
The investigators for the Office of Congressional Ethics found that AFAZ and the other Houston-based nonprofit, TCAE, were used to conceal the true source of the funding for travel and other expenses for the U.S. officials.
“The OCE found that the disclosed nonprofit sponsors contributed virtually no money towards congressional travel to Azerbaijan and played a very limited role in organizing the Convention,” the report said.
On April 16, 2013, Kemal Oksuz, an executive in charge of the nonprofits, wrote to the president of SOCAR, requesting $750,000 to underwrite the conference, according to the report. In return, Oksuz pledged that SOCAR’s “logo will be used on all printed materials, banners and website, and that SOCAR will be recognized as the Main Sponsor of the Convention.”
On May 13, SOCAR transferred $750,000 into the Wells Fargo account of AFAZ, according to the report. Three days later, AFAZ made its first money transfer to pay for the plane tickets for the conference attendees.
“SOCAR and AFAZ provided gifts in the form of impermissible travel expenses to congressional travelers in violation of House rules, regulations and federal law,” the ethics investigators said.
‘Sponsors’ provided no funding
Last summer, the Houston Chronicle published an examination of the Baku conference and interviewed Oksuz. He told the newspaper that he was not required to disclose corporate sponsorships because “those contributions always came after the conventions.”
The investigators said five nonprofits affiliated with the Azerbaijani government said they sponsored the conference, filing sworn statements with the Ethics Committee in April and May 2013.
“The five sponsoring organizations contributed no funding for the congressional travel in spite of false affirmations on the forms they submitted to the Committee on Ethics,” the investigators wrote in the report.
SOCAR assembled a list of lawmakers, other U.S. officials and private individuals it wanted to attend the three-day conference. The oil company invited more than 30 people to speak in Baku, according to the report, including Gibbs, Messina and Plouffe. SOCAR also invited Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had lost his reelection campaign in 2012.
In addition to SOCAR, BP, ConocoPhillips and KBR also helped to underwrite the costs of the conference, estimated at $1.5 million. Those costs included $100,000 for hotel accommodations, $75,000 for food and entertainment, and $1.2 million for travel and other expenses.
Several members of Congress and their staff members also took side trips to Turkey, traveling to Istanbul, Ankara or both, the investigators found. They included Clarke, Lujan Grisham, Hinojosa and Lance.
The Bosphorus Atlantic Cultural Association of Friendship and Cooperation, a Turkish nonprofit organization, covered the expenses, the report said. The lawmakers did not disclose the role of that nonprofit.
“Members of Congress who traveled to Turkey accepted payment of travel expenses from impermissible sources, resulting in an impermissible gift, in violation of House rules and regulations,” the report found.
Investigators also said lawmakers received a number of gifts, including crystal tea sets, briefcases, silk scarves, turquoise earrings, gold-painted plates and Azerbaijani rugs. Some congressional staff members told the investigators they thought that the rugs were worth about $300 — $50 below the reporting threshold — and that they didn’t need to disclose them on their forms filed with the Ethics Committee.
The report said “evidence suggests” that all lawmakers received at least one rug and some got two, one prayer-sized and one area rug. Many staff members also received rugs.
Only one lawmaker, Bridenstine, disclosed the rugs on his financial forms. He had them appraised: the smaller rug at $2,500 and the larger at $3,500. In a July 2013 letter to the Ethics Committee, he said he wanted to donate the larger rug to the House Clerk’s Office.
Bridenstine was the only lawmaker to offer to pay for the rugs out of his own pocket, telling the committee that he would like to purchase the smaller rug “at fair market value.”
Amy Brittain, Kimbriell Kelly, Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
Scott Higham is reporter assigned to The Post’s investigative unit.
Steven Rich is the database editor for investigations at The Washington Post. While at The Post, he’s worked on investigations involving tax liens, civil forfeiture, cartels and government oversight. He was also a member of the reporting team awarded the Pulitzer for NSA revelations.
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