Wilbur Ross, Trump official who watches the night watchdogs of ethics: NPR

This story is published in partnership with The Center for Public Integrity

The promise of wealthy businessman Wilbur Ross to part with assets worth millions of dollars by becoming Commerce Department Secretary was warmly congratulated in 2017, even by the Democrats.

At Ross's confirmation hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, pointed to the contrast between Ross's commitment to divest himself and the president's own decision to retain his business.

But two years later, the series of inaccuracies regarding the disclosure of financial information of Ross calls the sentence instead of hosannas.

"I think, for the most part, he has misled the committee, and many of my colleagues have relied on these misleading, potentially misleading representations," Blumenthal said in an interview. this month.

Even a member of the Republican Senate leadership, John Thune, of South Dakota, asked that an investigation be conducted to determine whether Ross had placed the public interest ahead of his own.

But Ross, 81, continues to serve as the unethical trade secretary, even as cabinet officials around him have been struck by their ethical weaknesses. The saga highlights the weaknesses of a government system of ethics that has long relied on political pressure as a mechanism of execution and was not designed to control the billionaires.

Ross did not sell his assets when he said he would do it – although he told ethics officials he did. His inaccuracies and omissions also raised serious questions as to whether he had taken any official measures that would undermine his personal financial interests, which would constitute a violation of the Conflict of Interest Act. – what he repeatedly said not to have done.

Ross has acknowledged errors in his personal financial statements. One of its assets, a tranche of shares of the investment management company Invesco Ltd. worth between $ 10 million and $ 50 million, saw its value rise by seven figures during its late divestment, revealed a survey by the Center for Public Integrity.

In a rare reprimand from a Cabinet official, the executive power's ethics watchdog refused last week to certify Ross's 2018 personal financial disclosure report, which he said was not available. he had filed for the first time last August. Emory Rounds, director of the government's Ethics Office, said he would not certify it because Ross had incorrectly stated that he had sold the BankUnited shares. In fact, he had not sold until October 2018. Ross's acknowledgment that he had not sold the shares, said he had been reported for the first time by the Center for Public Integrity in December . The Commerce Secretary "was therefore not in compliance with his agreement on ethics," writes Rounds.

Ross declined an interview for this article. In a statement provided by the Department of Commerce before the Office of Ethics refused to certify his report, Ross said, "I continue to follow the direction of the Department of Commerce Ethics Officers to to ensure compliance with federal laws and regulations, discoveries I remain committed to the American people and will continue to seek the advice of those in charge of ethics. "

After the decision of the EMB, he stated in a separate statement that he was "disappointed" that his report was not certified and that he remained "determined to respect my agreement in ethics and to follow the guidelines of the heads of the Ethics of Trade ".

Ross is far from the only person appointed to a high-level position at Trump, whose personal finances and conduct have been scrutinized. In fact, compared to other ethical scandals related to Trump administration – abuse of government travel budgets, acceptance of inappropriate gifts, request for a Chick-fil-A franchise for a spouse – Ross disclosure issues may seem obscure or obscure. His dumb public statements at the closing attracted more attention than his ethical failings – and spurred a parody of Saturday Night Live.

But it turns out Ross is the nominee appointed by Trump who watches over the guards of ethics at night.

"This recording by Ross and other people of many inaccuracies on ethical forms shows, I think, the kind of commitment this administration has to ethics, which is essentially an outrage," he said. said Kathleen Clark, a professor of government law in ethics at Washington University. . Louis.

Ross's ethical issues echo those of Trump. Both have complex and opaque financial assets that can not be fully understood from the information on the public record. Both were criticized for not selling their assets. Both were accused of acting in their own interest rather than in that of the public.

"It has eluded the review a bit more popular because it's sophisticated and confusing infractions about the nature of the problem," Delaney said. Marsco, Legal Counsel for Ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit organization. watchdog who filed a 115-page complaint against Ross last summer. "But that makes them even more serious … it's a pattern of irregularity."

Marsco and others say that after two years, they are still unable to confirm, from the public disclosure documents, whether Ross has clearly separated from all the assets he promised to sell.

Six months ago, after a particularly harsh reprimand by government officials on ethics, Ross said that "to maintain public confidence", he would sell all his shares and place the proceeds in US Treasury securities. . At the end of November, he revealed the sale of certain assets. Ross took office as a member of Trump's Golden Tribe, billed as a billionaire titan who earned Trump's respect when he helped him out of a disastrous disorder. in Atlantic City, New Jersey, more than a quarter of a century ago.

Clark, the law professor, is struck by the similarities between Ross and Trump. Marsco said: "The tone of the top has been:" I will not disclose my tax returns. I will not part with my company. I will hire my parents. "And of course, other people will do the same things, why not, where are the consequences?"

The White House asked the Commerce Department a question about the contents of the Ross case concerning the administration's commitment to ethics.

In response to a question as to whether Ross's ethical issues have raised concerns in the White House about his work as a trade secretary, spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: "Secretary Wilbur Ross has defended the President's program and played a key role in the Under the leadership of Secretary of State Ross, the Department of Commerce has flourished."

Congress members have asked the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice to investigate Ross. Ross is scheduled to testify before the House Watch and Reform Committee next month and could be questioned about his personal financial disclosure issues.

How did Ross get here?

Even at his confirmation hearing, Ross's decision to keep his investments in transoceanic shipping raised questions.

But ethics officials did not demand that he divest himself and Ross at the hearing said that transportation was not a problem. "The research we have done suggests that the Department of Commerce has never been seized of an expedition case," Ross said, adding, "I hear being very scrupulous about the challenge. [anytime] there is the slightest flicker of doubt. "

In March 2017, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that Ross' involvement in Diamond S Shipping raised complex conflict of interest concerns, given his strong role in the commercial policy of the company. ;administration. Most of the company's fleet is under Chinese flag and the company is linked to a large Chinese investment company.

Later this year, The New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that a Russian energy company, Sibur, was a major customer of another Ross Naval Holding, Navigator Holdings, and that the son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin was a member of the Sibur Board of Directors. Some experts in ethics have stated that his membership of interests in the maritime transport sector poses potential conflicts for his involvement in trade policy. In November 2017, Ross stated that he had sold his stakes in Diamond S and Navigator.

Meanwhile, questions about Ross 'finances – and Ross' mistakes – continued to pile up.

Forbes reports raised questions about Ross's net worth and whether he had told the truth about his assets. Ross admitted to transferring certain assets to a trust for his family, but he gave contradictory information about the transfer schedule. Then, in a series of documents filed with Ethics Officers, Ross acknowledged that he had not disposed of the assets that he had promised to assign by becoming a Secretary of Commerce until the end of the year. to months after having supposed to have done so.

In one such case, which accounted for between $ 10 million and $ 50 million of shares of Invesco Ltd., the value of the stock had increased seven digits over the period. In other cases, he stated that he sold certain shares short, a decision that government officials in charge of ethics later described as "an ineffective attempt to remedy your actual or apparent inability to surrender your shares. in due time ".

Failures have raised questions about conflict of interest, according to observers of ethics. For example, Invesco invested in Chinese steel, and in 2017 Ross conducted an investigation to determine whether the United States should impose tariffs on Chinese steel. At the time, he still held the title of Invesco.

The Commerce Department stated that Ross had kept his promise to challenge Invesco and that as of July, no case involving Invesco had been brought up. Ross repeatedly reiterated that the series of inaccuracies and omissions was inadvertently committed and claimed to have not violated the Conflict of Interest Act.

His claims were not enough to satisfy legislators.

"The extent and boldness of his ethical failings are just staggering," said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, a prominent member of the Senate's powerful finance committee. Wyden has requested an investigation from the Justice Department on Ross. In a July letter, David J. Apol, then Acting Head of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency in charge of ethics control for the executive branch, sent Ross a very specific letter. to express my concern about how recent actions on your part could have affected public confidence ".

In his letter, Apol urged Ross to "dedicate the resources necessary to ensure that your report and all future communications with EMB are complete and accurate."

Despite the warning, Ross did not do it: he filed a statement of financial status form in August but has since corrected it to acknowledge that he had reported divesting the shares BankUnited which he still owned. The Commerce Department later pointed out that it was only 100 shares worth about $ 3,700 – a tiny fraction of Ross's net worth, and of an amount too low to prevent it from working on related issues. Nevertheless, this forced him to recognize another inaccuracy.

Ross's misstatement of the BankUnited assignment was the last straw for federal ethics officials. In a letter explaining why he would not certify Ross's report for 2018, Rounds pointed out that the EMB, in its July warning to Ross "had indicated that even unintentional mistakes could undermine public confidence".

But OGE lacks authority in enforcement, leaving it with few tools beyond public reprimand and the possibility of referring potential investigations to entities such as the United States. Inspector General of Commerce or the Ministry of Justice.

After sending his letter last summer to Apol, Thune, chairman of the Commerce and Senate Committee of the Senate, asked the Inspector General of Commerce to check whether Ross had violated the conflict laws of # 39; interests. Thune, who no longer sits as chairman of the committee, declined to be interviewed. The Office of the Inspector General does not comment on the outstanding cases.

Former ethics and watchdog officials claim that there is no real precedent for errors and omissions in Ross' disclosure documents.

"There seem to be many mistakes, deceptions or lies," said Marilyn Glynn, General Counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, as well as acting director of George W. Bush's administration. "For a guy whose business is to manage and invest money, he is terribly botched and a million red lights go off to indicate that there is something wrong with him. Strange here. " Don Fox, also former General Counsel and Acting Director of EMB: "I have not seen anything that addresses this problem.It is certainly incredibly careless of how he approached respecting his agreement. on ethics. "

Ross is not the only member of the Cabinet whose forms have not yet been certified: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has delivered his on time in May, but EMB has not yet approved them . The cause of the delay in this case is unclear. A Ministry of Finance spokeswoman said Mnuchin was working with OGE to get it certified.

OGE is also required to certify and publicly publish two transaction reports filed by Mnuchin in 2018, showing that it had invested between $ 1.1 and $ 5.25 million in a limited liability company, North Park I. Public Information on North Park I are inadequate, created in Delaware in August. In response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity and NPR, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Finance said it was "a personal asset other than investment held at 100% "by Mnuchin. She did not answer questions directly about what the LLC has.

Questions about Ross divestments

Ross's original financial disclosure form may have been praised, but it was also impenetrable – 57 pages, including six pages of endnotes meant to explain the complexities, such as the underlying holdings of different business entities.

Ross is not the first billionaire trade secretary to have problems. His predecessor in the Obama administration, Penny Pritzker, had to amend his statement of financial status forms before it was confirmed because she had underestimated her income by tens of millions of dollars. She also fired in connection with offshore tax havens.

The disclosure forms are designed for ordinary people entering the public service, said Jack Blum, a lawyer and former Senate employee in Washington, expert in tax evasion and money laundering. They are "not intended for people who have stakes in dozens of companies that, in turn, own other companies whose financial statements are as obscure as possible because they are all private and therefore can not understand, "said Blum.

Monitoring groups such as the Campaign Legal Center, American Oversight, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington claim that, despite Ross' revelations – and the series of changes he has filed – they continue to stand up. to question what he actually diverted.

Ross stated that he had put assets into what he described in an interview as "family trust". This, too, has raised new questions about which assets have been placed in trust and how trust is created.

Ross told the ethics executive that he and his wife had no financial interest in the trust, although it was not entirely clear who owned it. In June 2018, he told CNBC that he had "no economic interest" in the trust and had used it to dispose of "illiquid assets" that were very difficult to sell. "

New level of ethical problems?

Fox, the former head of the EMB, said the most frequently asked question about Ross is how the government will hold him accountable for his ethical problems. "And I do not always have a good answer to that."

During the Bush and Obama administrations, he said, political accountability would have been the first line of defense – a call to the White House board office to say that someone is not respecting a deal. # 39; ethics.

Walter Shaub, the head of the government's Ethics Office at the time of Trump's inauguration, resigned in July 2017 and has since become a prominent critic of the state's ethics management. administration. "We are seeing a level of ethical problems that we simply had not seen" in previous administrations, he said, which highlighted the limitations of the program. ethics – and the lack of power to implement the EMB law -.

The rules of ethics, he said, still depended on the fact that appointees respect the standards and presidents, who were wary of the political scandal, "pushing their own staff to behave." And we discover that you can not always count on that if you have a president who does not care about ethical rules.

Shaub, who now sits at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he hoped the flurry of scandals would push Congress to exercise control and strengthen the system. During a hearing before a House committee, he recently testified how the anti-corruption legislation proposed by the Democrats would strengthen the Office of Government Ethics by giving it a power of summons and a strengthened implementation capacity, among other proposals approved by him.

Disclosure violations may seem technical, but ultimately, the ethical rules of government are essential to public trust.

"They allow us," he said, "to trust the idea that people to whom we entrust great power use this power only to our advantage and not to their advantage."

the Center for Public Integrity is a non-partisan, non-profit investigative press organization in Washington, DC You can follow Carrie Levine on Twitter: @levinecarrie