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WASHINGTON – Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, said that he would sell all his remaining stocks after the Office of Government Ethics blamed him for continuing to invest – and to make it worse. to acquire new ones – which he had to yield. [19659002] In a well-written letter, the Ethics Office stated that Mr. Ross owned assets that his ethics contract required him to dispose of – including opening short selling positions – Would have put in position to violate the criminal laws on conflicts of interest. He also blamed "various omissions and misrepresentations" in documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
"Your failure to surrender has created a potential for serious criminal violation on your part and undermined public trust," David Apol, Acting Director of the Ethics Office, wrote in a letter dated Thursday.
In a statement on Thursday night, Mr. Ross stated that he had made "inadvertent mistakes" but that he had self-reported each and "worked diligently" with officials of the company. ethics to avoid conflicts of interest. He said that he would sell all his shares and place the proceeds in the US Treasury Bills "to maintain public trust."
The value of the investments Mr. Ross continued to hold after agreeing to assign them was significant, including "This is not like the change that occurs between the couch cushions," Kathleen Clark said. , Professor of Law and Ethics Expert at the University of Washington. Norman Eisen, a czar of ethics at the Obama White House and chairman of the CREW government oversight group, said: "He demonstrated a level of recklessness that, in a normal administration , would be extraordinary. "
Mr. Ross, a financier who has built his fortunes for decades of troubled corporate restructuring, has been harassed by questions about his finances since the publication last year of Paradise Papers, a cache of documents from an offshore firm obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. These documents show that Mr. Ross retained a financial interest in the shipping company Navigator Holdings, which has entered into a partnership with a Russian oligarch-based energy company with close ties to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin a few days after Mr. Ross was contacted by the New York Times for an upcoming article on these links, he took a stance short of $ 100,000 to $ 250,000 on the Navigator stock – essentially a bet that the value of the stock would decrease – position to potentially profit from the negative news about the company The company's stock price dropped by about 4% before Ross closed his position, 11 days after the Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists took action. published an article about his links with Navigator. that the information on which the journalist had contacted him was not "merchant" and that making money was not the purpose of the short sale .
The letter from the Bureau of Government Ethics also cited Mr. Ross for failing to sell in a company called Invesco, the parent company of his private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., in accordance with his agreement of ethics. Mr. Ross signed a form in November 2017 stating that he had concluded the divestitures he had agreed upon earlier that year, but in December he submitted a report revealing that he was not Had sold the Invesco stake only on 19 and 20 December.
The office said that an internal investigation of the Department of Commerce that examined the calendars, the information documents and correspondence of Mr. Ross did not indicate the presence of any ". a criminal offense and that there was no evidence to contradict Mr. Ross' argument that the omissions and inaccuracies were unintentional. However, he added that even unintentional mistakes could undermine public confidence and violate the conflict of interest law. Federal ethical rules prohibit government employees from using the information they collect as part of their work for private profit purposes.
Clark stated that the question called for further investigation. "There is no reason for the public to feel reassured," she said. "I'm not saying that Ross has violated the law on conflicts of criminal interest, I'm not saying that he intentionally made a false statement," she added. "But those two things need to be investigated. "
Potential violations of ethics have attracted several prominent members of the Trump administration, including Scott Pruitt, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who resigned last week Tom Price, the former secretary of health and social services, resigned last year after criticizing the fact that he was spending at least $ 400,000 for flights
Mr. Ross removed Mr. Ross from his list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 2017, after his ethical revelations showed his assets at less than $ 700 million, a fraction of what Forbes had previously reported and what Mr. Ross had previously claimed.
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