This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet.
The powerful Laredo congressman is indicted for allegedly acting as a foreign agent for Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank in exchange for at least $600,000 in bribes.Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a staunch ally of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar during his recent reelection fights.In January 2013, U.S.
In 2014, a year after his trip, Cuellar entered into what would be an allegedly lucrative and criminal relationship with Azerbaijan, federal prosecutors allege, advocating for the country’s interests in the United States in exchange for cash bribes routed from the Azerbaijani state-owned oil company to shell companies set up by his wife for allegedly “sham” consulting services. The indictment alleges Azerbaijani diplomats were directly involved.
The Department of Justice claims those were bribes paid to shell companies set up by Cuellar’s wife, made under the guise of “sham” consulting contracts that the congressman was directly involved in negotiating and for which his wife “performed little or no legitimate work,” according to the indictment.
The indictment also says that an unnamed Mexican government official allegedly helped broker the deal and advised the congressman that the consulting payments from Banco Azteca be routed through other companies. Cuellar’s “adult child” is also named as “Co-Conspirator 6” in Rendon’s plea agreement. In late 2021, Cuellar told Rendon to set up a similar consulting arrangement with his child. Rendon met with Cuellar child’s in late 2021 and gave them a $2,000 check, according to court records.
“In reality,” prosecutors allege, “the contract was a sham used to disguise and legitimate the corrupt agreement between Henry Cuellar and the Government of Azerbaijan.” In the coming months, the Cuellars further negotiated terms with SOCAR, settling on a monthly consulting fee of $20,000. Through various contract agreements, money was funneled by SOCAR through Azerbaijani front companies and two U.S. affiliates based in the Houston area to the Cuellar companies.
The payments restarted in 2017, when the Cuellars negotiated a third “sham contract” with the state oil company. Again, Congressman Cuellar was directly involved in those contract negotiations, organizing a lunch meeting in October 2017 between his wife and SOCAR officials in San Antonio to discuss the deal, according to the charges. Text messages in the indictment show that Suleymanov was aware of the meeting and that the gathering took place at a San Antonio steakhouse.
The indictment includes several text messages that Cuellar and Suleymanov exchanged about the congressman’s efforts to advance the Azerbaijanis’ foreign policy agenda. In April 2016, Cuellar wrote a letter to a “high-ranking” official in President Barack Obama’s administration claiming that Armenia was a “proxy” for Russia and lobbying for the withdrawal of military forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an Armenian enclave in western Azerbaijan.
Because of a U.S. crackdown on money laundering starting in 2012, Banco Azteca began to have difficulty finding “correspondent banks” that it could use to “repatriate large reserves of physical U.S. currency” it held in Mexico back to the United States. One of Banco Azteca’s U.S. partnerswas the Lone Star National Bank of Pharr, which the feds repeatedly cited and fined for failing to take preventative action against money laundering.
Still Rendon thought it best to add yet another layer between his firm and the Cuellar shell company, the indictment said. Cuellar suggested using Strother’s consulting company as another middleman. According to the complaint, Rendon told Strother that this was part of a deal to sell Mexican fuel lubricants in the United States, which was “merely a cover story to disguise and legitimate the payments” to Strother.
Cuellar Indictment South Texas San Antonio Azerbaijan Mexico Bribery Corruption
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