Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar and wife indicted over allegations of $600,00 bribes from Azerbaijan
Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife have been indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of conspiracy and bribery, after allegedly taking nearly $600,000 from a Azerbaijani-controlled company and a Mexican bank.
The charges were announced on Friday by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), shortly after Mr Cuellar protested his innocence.
It is alleged that from 2014 to 2021, Mr Cuellar and his wife accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico, and in exchange, the congressman agreed to advance the interests of the country and the bank in the US, according to the indictments seen by the Associated Press.
Among other things, Mr Cueller allegedly agreed to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the US House.
The announcement comes after the congressman released a statement earlier on Friday in which he claimed that “everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas.”
“I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations,” Mr 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.”
He added that the actions he took in Congress were “consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people.”
A conservative Democrat, Mr Cuellar has long been a target of progressives given his opposition to abortion rights. Mr Cuellar’s defenders have long said he is the only Democrat who can win in the heavily conservative and Latino Rio Grande Valley.
He was at one time the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.
In 2022, the FBI raided Mr Cuellar’s congressional office in Laredo and his home. His attorney at that time said the congressman was not the target of that investigation.
That search was part of a broader investigation related to Azerbaijan that saw FBI agents serve a raft of subpoenas and conduct interviews in Washington DC, and Texas, a person with direct knowledge of the probe previously told The Associated Press.
Federal disclosures show that the nine-term congressman traveled to Azerbaijan in 2013. Two years later, Mr Cuellar’s office announced an agreement between a Texas university and an organization called the Assembly of Friends of Azerbaijan for the purposes of collaborating on oil and gas research and education.
Despite the controversy surrounding the raids in 2022, Mr Cuellar went on to beat back a left-wing Democratic challenger – Jessica Cisneros – for the second time.
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