Houston executive pleads guilty to lying about lawmakers’ trip to Baku

Buses line up outside the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, the site of the 2013 US-Azerbaijan Vision for the Future convention organized by Houston businessman Kemal Oksuz. Buses line up outside the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, the site of the 2013 US-Azerbaijan Vision for the Future convention organized by Houston businessman Kemal Oksuz. Photo: Larry Luxner / The Washington Diplomat Photo: Larry Luxner / The Washington Diplomat Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Houston executive pleads guilty to lying about lawmakers’ trip to Baku 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON - The former president of a Houston-based nonprofit pleaded guilty Monday to lying to Congress about a 2013 trip to Azerbaijan by 10 U.S. lawmakers, including four House members from Texas, whose expenses were secretly funded by the Azerbaijan government’s oil company.

Kemal Oksuz, aka "Kevin Oksuz," 49, pleaded guilty to one count of devising a scheme to conceal material facts from the U.S. House Ethics Committee investigating questions that had been raised in a Houston Chronicle account of the lavish, all-expenses-paid trip to Baku, the Caspian Sea capital of Azerbaijan.

The House panel eventually exonerated all 10 U.S. lawmakers who took the trip, saying they had been misled about its true sponsors and that they didn't "knowingly" break any law or House rules.

For subscribers at HoustonChronicle.com: Lawmakers’ trips to Baku conference raise ethics questions

Among those Oksuz allegedly misled about the trip were Houston Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee and Ruben Hinojosa, a border district Democrat who has since retired from Congress.

Two Houston-area Republicans also made the government-funded trip: U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, who is retiring next month, and former Congressman Steve Stockman, who was sentenced last month to a 10-year prison term in an unrelated fraud case.

All but Stockman, who could not be reached for comment, told the Chronicle in 2015 that they had no advance knowledge that the state oil company had funded the conference. Poe’s office maintained that he contacted the House Ethics Committee to self-report the allegations initially raised in a Chronicle investigation.

While the lawmakers denied prior knowledge of the state oil company’s involvement, investigators said there were ample signs of the conference’s true underwriter, including banners and placards with the firm’s logo. Photos and programs pointed to its involvement.

About three dozen congressional staffers also attended the conference, which attracted widespread attention because of the involvement of top Obama administration officials and Azerbaijan’s interest in winning congressional support to avoid U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran, its partner in a multibillion dollar Caspian Sea national gas project.

Oksuz acknowledged in his guilty plea Monday that he lied on disclosure forms filed with the Ethics Committee in advance of what had been represented as a privately sponsored congressional trip to an energy conference in Azerbaijan.

According to federal prosecutors, Oksuz falsely represented that the trip would be underwritten by the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians (TCAE), the Houston nonprofit which he led as president.

The Turquoise Council ostensibly paid airfare and hotel bills for Poe, Jackson Lee, Stockman and Hinojosa and his wife. Those trips cost from $10,500 to $19,961, according to disclosures the four lawmakers filed with the House Ethics Committee.

Oksuz has since admitted that he orchestrated a scheme to funnel money for the trip from the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), the wholly state-owned national oil and gas company of Azerbaijan.

Members of Congress are generally barred by House travel regulations from accepting gifts and travel from foreign governments.

A spokesman for SOCAR disputed that it had “secretly” played a role in the May 2013 conference in Baku. “At no time did SOCAR hide from the attendees of the conference our involvement,” the firm said during the 2015 probe. “SOCAR’s logo and name was presented prominently in Baku at multiple events. SOCAR has never been under investigation in this matter because the responsibility for disclosing SOCAR’s financial support for the conference fell to those who were the trip’s sponsors.”

While House investigators closed the Azerbaijan investigation in 2015, they said they were referring the allegations to the Justice Department to determine whether "third parties" involved in arranging the lawmakers' travel engaged in a "criminal conspiracy to lie to Congress."

One of the key figures in the House probe was Oksuz, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify in the House probe.

After a three-year investigation, prosecutors filed a five-count indictment earlier this year in the District of Columbia naming Oksuz, who had long since disappeared from Houston and was believed to be residing abroad. The charges were unsealed in September.

Oksuz was recently extradited from Armenia where he was detained by authorities, pursuant to a warrant that was issued for his arrest.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI. The case is being prosecuted by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, along with the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

The Office of International Affairs, along with the U.S. Department of State and cooperating Armenian authorities provided substantial assistance with the extradition, according to a statement by Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Oksuz will be sentenced on Feb. 11.