Irada Akhoundova pleaded guilty to facilitating a $60,000 payment to Imelda Cueller, the congressman’s wife, that she believed would benefit Azerbaijan and its state-run oil company.
’s bribery case has pleaded guilty, according to a recently unsealed plea agreement, after the South Texas Democrat was accused of accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank.
Akhoundova is the third person publicly known to have pleaded guilty as part of the federal investigation into the Texas congressman. Cuellar’s former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and another consultant, Florencio"Lencho" Rendon,were indicted on April 30 on charges of accepting payments from Azerbaijan's state-run oil and gas company.
According to Akhoundova’s plea agreement, Imelda Cuellar was acting as the owner of a consulting company, when she allegedly submitted falsified invoices to a Texas-based affiliate of an Azerbaijani company — run by Akhoundova. Cuellar received the payment in December 2014, despite not having done any work for Akhoundova’s company.
In 2020, Akhoundova received emails from an Azerbaijani government agency to organize a campaign in the U.S. to influence the U.S. public’s opinion about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
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