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Coalition urges lawmakers to release ethics report on Azerbaijan trip

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WASHINGTON - A coalition of civic groups and academics is calling for the release of an independent watchdog agency report on a 2013 congressional trip to a conference sponsored by Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company that was attended by four Texas lawmakers.

In a letter sent Wednesday, the coalition expressed "deep concern" that the House Ethics Committee - which cleared the lawmakers of any wrongdoing - decided to withhold an earlier 70-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) detailing the trip.

"We are concerned about the committee's unprecedented decision not to release the OCE's findings in circumstances where the members under investigation remain within the Ethics Committee jurisdiction," the letter says. "This decision is especially concerning because the committee itself played a decisive role in approving the members' travel to Azerbaijan.

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A spokesman for the Ethics Committee declined comment, as did a spokeswoman for the OCE.

'Dangerous precedent'

Among 10 U.S. lawmakers and their staffs who took the free trip, four were from Texas: Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and Ruben Hinojosa, and Republicans Ted Poe and Steve Stockman, who has since left office.

In clearing the lawmakers last month, the Ethics Committee released its own 28-page report which took issue with the OCE's decision to continue its own independent investigation even after being informed that congressional investigators were conducting a probe.

Although the more hard-hitting OCE report was leaked to the media earlier in May, the coalition argued that the failure of the Ethics Committee to formally make it public sets a "dangerous precedent" that could undermine the ethics process.

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The case involves a trip to Azerbaijan that was allegedly funded by the state oil company of the Azerbaijan Republic, with money laundered through a network of nonprofit organizations based in Houston.

Congressional investigators said they will refer the matter to the Justice Department to determine whether "third parties" involved in arranging the lawmakers' travel engaged in a "criminal conspiracy to lie to Congress."

One of the key figures in the probe is Kemal Oksuz, who is closely associated with two nonprofits that organized the trip, the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians and the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan. Oksuz invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify in the House probe.

The cost of the trip ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars and included expensive and prohibited gifts for some members and their staffs. While investigators were not able to determine the true donors of the gifts, the panel directed the travelers to "take remedial action" - either by returning or disposing of them.

The Ethics Committee did not identify the gift recipients, but Hinojosa released a July 22 letter to the panel in which he acknowledged receiving a large rug and several smaller prayer rugs. He said he turned the large rug over to the House Clerk's Office and donated the prayer rugs to charity.

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None of the other Texas lawmakers have disclosed whether they received any gifts on the trip, and if so, how they disposed of them.

Complaining groups

The letter to the Ethics Committee was signed by the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Demand Progress, Democracy 21, the National Legal & Policy Center and Public Citizen, as well as scholars Thomas Mann, Norm Ornstein and James Thurber.

The letter alleges that in ordering the OCE to end its investigation, the chairman and ranking member of the Ethics Committee did not make it clear that the committee itself would pursue the investigation.

The OCE declined to end the investigation and sent its final report and findings to the committee as required under the House rules. On July 31, the committee found no evidence of violations by the members and staff under investigation, and has since refused to release the OCE findings to the public.

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Kevin Diaz came to the Houston Chronicle in February 2014 with more than a decade of experience covering Washington. Before that, he was the chief Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he got his start in journalism in 1984 as a night cops reporter. During his tenure in Minneapolis, he won awards for his coverage of gang crime and city hall. He also taught public affairs reporting at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Master’s. After a stint at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, Kevin went back to the Star Tribune, where he won national awards for articles on globalization and immigration. He also covered the 9/11 terrorist attacks from Washington and New York. Born and raised in Italy, Kevin has reported from Italy, Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba, where he covered Jesse Ventura’s 2002 trade mission. In 2003, he filed daily Iraq War dispatches for McClatchy Newspapers from the U.S. Central Command in Qatar. In 2006, he covered the presidential election standoff in Mexico. He also has covered Washington for the Anchorage Daily News and the Idaho Statesman.