Charges Against a Congressman Lay Bare Foreign Government Influence Attempts

Beyond the payments Menendez and Cuellar are accused of receiving, Azerbaijan, Egypt and Qatar have been heavy spenders on traditional Washington lobbying to maintain the flow of United States aid and to win support in disputes with neighbors.

From 2015 to the end of last year, Egypt spent $14.3 million on lobbying and Qatar spent nearly $85.9 million, according to analyses by the nonpartisan website OpenSecrets of disclosures to the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. The disclosures do not include donations to think tanks and other expenditures that wealthy foreign governments use to try to generate good will.

Azerbaijan spent nearly $9.2 million on lobbying in that time, according to FARA filings. Arms of the government retained about 20 firms during that time, including ones led by former Gov. Haley Barbour, Republican of Mississippi, and former Rep. Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who served as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The lobbying efforts also involved firms run by Democrats, such as the former Biden adviser Larry Rasky, who died in 2020, and the fund-raiser Vincent A. Roberti.

Azerbaijan’s goals included winning support for the reintegration of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory in the Lesser Caucasus, which has been under dispute with Armenia for decades. (Azerbaijan seized full control of the territory in September.) Azerbaijan also wanted Congress to repeal a ban on U.S. aid imposed in 1992 during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war.

While the United States has continually issued waivers to the ban since 2001, the Azerbaijanis consider the durability of the underlying ban “kind of an insult and injustice,” said Richard Kauzlarich, who served as ambassador to Azerbaijan during the Clinton administration.

“I haven’t seen signs of the return on the investment as far as issues that are important to Azerbaijan in terms of their lobbying efforts,” Kauzlarich said. He attributed that partly to continued concerns about human rights abuses by the Azerbaijani government and partly to the lack of an organized, activated diaspora like that which has lobbied for Armenian causes.

“No amount of money is going to be able to counter the number of voters in California and Massachusetts and elsewhere where Armenian Americans live, are active and vote,” he said.

While politicians in Europe have been accused of accepting gifts and bribes from Azerbaijani and Qatari officials, the prosecutors’ claims of payments to Menendez and Cuellar add a new wrinkle in the world of subterranean influence campaigns in Washington.

The lawmakers were in prime positions to help foreign governments. Menendez was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Cuellar served on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the budget of the State Department.

After their respective indictments, Menendez stepped down from his chairmanship, and Cuellar from his position as the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. Menendez’s trial is scheduled to begin this month. Both have vowed to remain in office as they contest the charges, and Cuellar has said he intends to continue his re-election campaign.

The Azerbaijanis’ courtship of Mr. Cuellar came as oil interests in the country, including the state-owned company that prosecutors say funded the payments to the Cuellars, maintained a presence in Texas.

Cuellar and his wife, along with other Texas lawmakers, were treated to trips to Azerbaijan in 2013. He received briefings from high-level government officials and attended a dinner with executives from the state-owned oil company, according to prosecutors. After Cuellar returned, he was recruited by Azerbaijani officials, who began funneling payments to a pair of consulting firms his wife created called IRC Business Solutions and Global Gold Group, according to prosecutors and Texas corporations filings.

The Cuellars used the money to pay off debts, fund living expenses and make purchases including a $12,000 custom gown and a $7,000 down payment for a new car, prosecutors say.

The indictment claims that Imelda Cuellar “performed little or no legitimate work in exchange for the payments.” Instead, “in exchange for the bribe payments, Henry Cuellar agreed to perform official acts and acts in violation of his official duties benefiting Azerbaijan and to be and act as an agent of the government of Azerbaijan.”

Among the services prosecutors say Cuellar performed at the behest of the Azerbaijanis was pressing the Obama administration to take a harder line against Armenia, trying to insert language favorable to Azerbaijan into legislation and committee reports and having members of his staff urge the State Department to renew a passport for the daughter of Suleymanov.

Cuellar’s efforts on behalf of Azerbaijan mostly seem to have had minimal impact. He withdrew the amendment to strip funding from Armenia after objections from an Armenian diaspora group.

“It was going to be ruled out of order so I withdrew but they are taking credit ha ha,” Cuellar texted Suleymanov.

The ambassador responded “they take credit for everything!”

After the indictment of Cuellar was unsealed, the group, Armenian Assembly of America, called for “a broader investigation in relation to these charges and who else may be tied to Azerbaijan’s corrupt modes of operation.”