WASHINGTON — The United States Department of Justice charged this Friday the representative democrat by Texas Henry Cuellar, co-chair of the Congressional caucus on Azerbaijan, and his wife a series of federal charges for receiving $600,000 in bribes by two foreign entities.
Both would have received this amount between December 2014 and November 2021 from a state oil company in Azerbaijan and a bank based in Mexico City in exchange for influencing legislative activity with initiatives in their favor.
“The payments were allegedly laundered pursuant to false consulting contracts through a series of front companies and intermediaries in shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Specifically, the charges include – each – two for conspiracy to commit bribery; two for violating the provision that public officials cannot act as foreign agents, two others for bribery of federal officials and five counts of money launderingamong others.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided his home and office in the southern Texas city of Laredo in 2022, as part of a federal investigation into a group of businessmen’s ties to Azerbaijan.
“I want to be very clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these accusations. Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the citizens of South Texas,” he said in a statement this Friday.
Source: With information from Europa Press