Kemal Oksuz pleads guilty, admits hiding SOCAR funding of Congress Trip - U.S. Justice Dept

Washington/11.12.18/Turan: Top Azeri lobbyist in the U.S. who has been indicted for funneling money from the government of Azerbaijan to pay for a foreign trip taken by members of Congress and their staff, pleaded guilty on Monday for his role in a scheme to conceal the fact that the trip was funded by SOCAR, the wholly state-owned national oil and gas company of Azerbaijan, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Kemal Oksuz, 48, who allegedly lied on disclosure forms filed with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics both before and after he helped use foreign money to illegally fund a congressional trip, was arrested in Armenia in August and was recently extradited to the U.S.

He will be sentenced on Feb. 11, 2019 before U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Justice Department announced last night.

"According to admissions made in connection with his guilty plea, Oksuz lied on disclosure forms filed with the Ethics Committee prior to, and following, a privately sponsored Congressional trip to Azerbaijan. Oksuz falsely represented and certified on required disclosure forms that the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasions (TCAE), the Houston non-profit for which Oksuz was president, had not accepted funding for the Congressional trip from any outside sources. Oksuz admitted to, in truth, orchestrating a scheme to funnel money to fund the trip from the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), the wholly state-owned national oil and gas company of Azerbaijan, and then concealed the true source of funding, which violated House travel regulations," reads the statement.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI.

* Recall that we are talking about a trip of 10 US congressmen and representatives of various states of America to Azerbaijan in 2013. SOCAR allocated $ 2.2 million for these purposes, the investigation says.

The scandal around this case began after the Washington Post published an article about suspicious financial sources of this trip on May 13, 2015.

A.Raufoglu