Member of the US House of Representatives since 2005.
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New members join U.S. Congress’s working group on Azerbaijan
Three new members joined the U.S. Congress’s working group on Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington told Trend.
Congressmen Ted Poe (Texas) and Michel Lujan Grisham (New Mexico) and Charlie Dent (Pennsylvania) have recently become members of U.S. Congress’s working group on Azerbaijan. At present, there are 59 members of the working group on Azerbaijan.
In the accession of these representatives of the Congress to the working group on Azerbaijan, a special role was played by the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan (AFAZ), which operates in the United States.
Source: trend.az
How Azerbaijan and Turkey deceived the US Congress: the mechanisms of “caviar diplomacy”
In the United States, the largest scandal of the last ten years with bribery of congressmen can erupt. For lobbying for its interests, Ankara and Baku have secretly paid for travels and gifts to US lawmakers, who in turn supported in Congress the laws beneficial to Turkey and Azerbaijan. This is stated in the report of the Ethics Office in the USA Congress and in the article of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (OCCRP), known as the Panama Offshore.
The Ethics Office of the US Congress is an independent body which investigates the misbehavior of US lawmakers, and it has fully proved two facts of bribery. Another 200 cases can be investigated. The main thing is the trip of US congressmen to Baku in 2013 for the US-Azerbaijan forum “Look into the future”. As stated in the report, the tour of the American legislators was a pleasure trip with expensive gifts. A year ago, many American newspapers wrote about this, but the report itself was still closed to the public, and the Ethics Committee of the Congress stated that everything was legal.
The other day the Ethics Office in Congress published the final report, which refuted the statement of the Congress Committee. The details of the document were cited on the website of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (OCCRP).
“In May 2013, the Azerbaijani government transferred through the State Oil Company SOCAR $ 750 thousand to the Texas non-governmental organization “Assembly of Friends of Azerbaijan”(AFAZ), – the OCCRP investigation results. It also distributed money to small public organizations that promote Turkey’s interests in the United States of America. A few weeks later 9 members of the US Congress landed in Baku, having made a tour on account of Azerbaijani money. Chic dinners, fireworks, gifts in the form of handmade carpets, crystal tea sets, silk scarves and CDs with the praise of the President of Azerbaijan – all this was free for US lawmakers. As one Washington diplomat noted, the visit of American congressmen became the largest in the history of the Caucasus and, as it turned out, the most flagrant violation of the ethical standards of the Congress over the past decade. This was acknowledged even by the Ethics Office in Congress, which published its report”.
According to the document, the government of Azerbaijan and SOCAR secretly financed the tour for 9 US congressmen and dozens of their assistants, and non-governmental organizations, in their turn, deceived the Ethics Office in Congress that they themselves paid for the conference. Moreover, the Ethics Committee of the Congress should investigate such cases, but it hampered the investigation and tried to hide it from the public.
Craig Holman, an ethics expert in Congress, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that he had not seen this kind of thing since Abramoff’s time. For bribing the congressman, Congressional advisors and White House officials, this American lobbyist was imprisoned in 2006 for 9 years and fined $ 21 million.
“And what do we have now? – says Craig Holman. – A foreign government involved in the fraud of the US Congress and the public. At the same time, the Ethics Committee tried to bury the report of the Office, which shows how the federal laws were impudently violated”.
The Azerbaijani government and SOCAR are not the only foreign structures that bribed Congressmen with travel and gifts. The USA Today publication found out that since 2008, congressmen have made 200 trips for money, which went through Turkish non-governmental organizations, and their sources were various groups in Turkey.
According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Azerbaijan had a good reason to try to “raise” its image in this way. The Caspian state ranks fifth in the world in terms of censorship and the third in corruption. And the issue of imposing sanctions against Baku is being considered in the Congress. By their strength, they are comparable to those that were introduced by the “Magnitsky list” against Russia.
Therefore, the publication of the report of the Ethics Office in Congress can be compared with the effect of a ruptured bomb if the Department of Justice of the Legislature passes it to the FBI. On the one hand, the scandal can positively resolve the fate of sanctions against Azerbaijan. On the other hand, criminal cases can be initiated against American congressmen. And, as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (OCCRP) notes, Baku and even the Ethics Committee of the Congress are trying to smother up a scandal.
“When in January 2015 the Ethics Office began to investigate the congressmen’s visit to Azerbaijan, the Ethics Committee did not object. Two months later, however, he demanded to stop the investigation and pass the evidence to the Committee. The reason is that the congressmen themselves are conducting the investigation”.
At the same time, as noted in the OCCRP, it was found that in May of the last year the head of the Ethics Committee Charlie Dent received at least 8 thousand dollars from five individuals connected with Kemal Oksuz. This person, according to the investigation, helped non-governmental organizations deceive the Congress about the purpose of the trip and sources of funding from Azerbaijan.
The Ethics Office in Congress noted that the pressure of the Ethics Committee was unprecedented. And after the fact that congressmen refused to release the report, the Office itself published it on its own website. The document consists of 76 pages of the report and thousands of pages of accompanying documents.
According to the American Center for Responsible Politics Opensecrets, the trip of congressmen paid off for Baku. Azerbaijan not only increased its image, but also enlisted the support of Congressmen to attract Western investment in oil and gas production in the Caspian Sea.
Thus, Republican Jim Bridenstine in Congress began to promote an amendment according to which the Pentagon would have to issue a report on the strategic importance for the USA of extracting natural gas in the Caspian Sea. And six other congressmen who went to Baku, signed under the resolution on greater access to Azerbaijani oil and gas reserves. Despite the fact, that American analysts consider Baku’s role in the energy security of the West exaggerated.
Meanwhile, three more congressmen who also visited Baku lobbied for the exclusion of the Iranian sanctions from the construction of a gas pipeline from the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field in the Caspian Sea. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was one of the partners of the SOCAR state-owned company in Baku. And sanctions could bury the project. “It will strengthen European security by offering an alternative to Russian gas,” insisted the congressmen who traveled to Baku. And they achieved their goal. “On June 3, 2013, five days after the congressmen’s visit to Baku, Barack Obama signed a decree assessing economic sanctions against Iran. It is said in the document that the gas pipeline project is not subject to sanctions”,- the Washington Post noted. The congressmen themselves then and now claim that they did not know that their trip was paid by the Azerbaijani government, so that they lobbied for the interests of Baku.
Source: eadaily.com