Baku/24.01.22/Turan: The connections of US Congressman Henry Cuellar with Azerbaijan are again under the close attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Last week, the FBI raided the congressman's home and office. The court reportedly sanctioned Cuellar, his wife and at least one of his colleagues for obtaining documents relating to their dealings with Azerbaijani companies.
Mostly, these are the documents of Kamal Oksuz, a former businessman from Houston, caught trying to mislead Congress about the role of Azerbaijan in financing the visit of 10 congressmen to Baku.
Until recently, Cuellar served as co-chair of the Azerbaijani faction in Congress and met with a number of Azerbaijani officials, including a group of Azerbaijani parliamentarians last November.
The executive secretary of the REAL party, Natig Jafarli, commented on this issue in the program "Difficult Question".
According to him, lobbying is legal in the USA, there is a separate legislation regulating lobbying activities, i.е. influencing public authorities in order to get them to take certain decisions, and various groups in the US are lobbying.
“However, here the talks is about suspicion of an attempt to mislead US government agencies regarding the sources of funding for some trips. In my opinion, this scandal is mainly related to the activities of SOCAR, its lobbying activities and or activities carried out with its financial support. Most likely, all this will be revealed during the investigation,” Jafarli said, adding that the scandal could have erupted due to a violation of formalities.
“If they acted within the law, then I think there would be no problems at all. All this could be done in a normal, civilized manner,” the functionary is sure.
According to him, SOCAR has the right to participate in lobbying and sponsorship, but this must be done in compliance with US laws.
“The problem is that Azerbaijani companies and officials are not very at odds with these laws and regulations. It would be possible to act in accordance with the laws on lobbying, in America it is not difficult. Azerbaijan should learn lobbying from the same Ukrainians who are seeking the adoption of sanctions against Russia in connection with the annexation of Crimea, Donbass and aggression against Ukraine,” Jafarli believes.
If the suspicions are confirmed, the FBI will establish that there really was an attempt to mislead the American government, this will cause serious damage to the image of Azerbaijan, the politician believes.
Difficult question
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