A congressman from Texas has been indicted on federal conspiracy and bribery charges over his links to Azerbaijan.
Henry Cuellar, 68, a Democrat who has represented a district on the US-Mexico border since 2005, was charged alongside his wife by the Department of Justice. The couple are accused of accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from an Azeri-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico between 2014 and 2021.
In exchange, Cuellar is accused of agreeing to advance the interests of the country and the bank in the US, according to the indictments. Cuellar, and his wife, Imelda, deny the charges.
The congressman was at one time the co-chairman of the congressional Azerbaijan caucus. He is accused of agreeing to influence legislation favourable to Azerbaijan, a former Soviet satellite state, and deliver a speech in its favour on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The FBI searched the congressman’s house in Laredo, Texas, two years ago. At the time Cuellar’s lawyer said that he was not the target of that investigation. Cuellar released a statement on Friday saying that he and his wife “are innocent of these allegations”.
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“Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas,” Cuellar said. “Before I took action, I proactively sought legal advice from the House ethics committee, who gave me more than one written opinion, along with an additional opinion from a national law firm. Furthermore, we requested a meeting with the Washington DC prosecutors to explain the facts and they refused to discuss the case with us or hear our side.”
Federal documents show that the nine-term congressman travelled to Azerbaijan in 2013. Two years later, Cuellar’s office announced an agreement between a Texas university and an organisation called the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan for the purposes of collaborating on oil and gas research and education.
Another Democrat in congress, Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey, has also been charged over his links with another country. In October Menendez, 70, was formally charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent of the Egyptian government. Three months later he was also accused of working for the government of Qatar.
Cuellar, one of few anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, defeated a progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, by fewer than 300 votes in a primary race in 2022.
