To Baku and Back With Freebies

nytimes.com: When does a congressional fact-finding trip become an embarrassing junket? Ten House members and 32 of their staff members should be pondering that question now that their all-expenses-paid trip to Baku two years ago has been found by ethics investigators to have been secretly financed by Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company. That would be a violation of House ethics rules and federal law against foreign governments’ intruding into United States policy.

According to an Office of Congressional Ethics report obtained this month by The Washington Post, the congressional junketeers were feted and showered with gifts during a visit to Baku, receiving crystal tea sets, silk scarves, Azerbaijani rugs and thousands of dollars’ worth of hotel and airline fees paid by the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as Socar. Two Texas-based nonprofit groups that promote American-Azerbaijan relations acted as conduits through which Socar allegedly funneled $750,000 to pay the tab while masking the state company’s role, investigators said.

The trip and its postmortem give an idea of how the House ethics process works, or doesn’t work. Lawmakers said they took care to clear the Baku invitation first by obtaining pre-approval from the House Ethics Committee. This committee is not to be confused with the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent entity that investigates outside complaints and was created seven years ago after the congressional junketeering scandals associated with the uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The office was created in part because of the ethics committee’s weak record for vigilance and enforcement. This annoyed many lawmakers, but the Azerbaijan junket has proved the O.C.E.’s worth. In this case, the office found alleged violations of ethics rules and the law, despite the ethics committee’s initial approval of the trip. At one point, according to the reported O.C.E. findings, members of the ethics committee sought to halt the investigation by the independent office and take it on themselves. The office declined the request.

It remains to be seen how the investigation will play out. What’s already clear is the need for the ethics committee to apply far greater scrutiny to trip proposals and their true sponsors when lawmakers seek the cover of pre-approval. In the meantime, the O.C.E. must continue in its vital role of providing oversight and keeping an independent eye on the House.