Ethics probe investigates Rep. Meeks over illegal $40,000 gift

Aug 07, 2011 News

New York (NYDailyNews.com) – Congressional investigators say Rep. Gregory Meeks appears to have violated federal law by hiding an illegal $40,000 gift he got from a local businessman.
The Office of Congressional Ethics released a 67-page report Friday detailing its investigation of the Queens Democrat, a report that followed a Daily News investigation of the seven-term lawmaker.
Last year, The News disclosed that in 2007, Meeks obtained from a personal friend what he termed a $40,000 “loan” with no documents, no specified interest rate, no due date and no payments for more than three years.
The OCE saw the “loan” from Queens businessman Edul Ahmad as a gift that should have been listed on Meeks’ 2007 and 2008 financial disclosure forms.
“There appears to be no evidence that there were any normal (signs) of a legitimate loan under House rules,” the report said.
The investigators recommended the House Ethics Committee pursue a further review of the “loan,” and the committee quickly agreed to do just that. This is the same committee that recently found Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel violated ethics rules.
The report pointed out that Meeks “provided no evidence that any interest rate was set at all, in writing or otherwise, when he received the money from Mr. Ahmad.”
The ethics office concluded that the loan “appears to have been a gift” due to the lack of documentation and the fact that Meeks made no payments until paying the loan off all at once in 2010.
The OCE declared there was “substantial reason” to believe Meeks broke the law by not reporting this “gift.”
Meeks refused to give the ethics office documents it requested during the investigation. As a result, the office suggested the ethics committee subpoena the documents from both Meeks and Ahmad.
Meeks disclosed the existence of the “gift” for the first time in his 2009 report and amended his earlier reports in June 2010. He secured the second loan later on that same month to pay off Ahmad.
Ahmad also refused to cooperate with the congressional investigators. The FBI busted him last month on mortgage fraud charges in an unrelated probe.
Shortly after yesterday’s report was released, Meeks’ lawyers released a letter to the ethics committee arguing that any problems with Meeks’ failure to disclose the “loan” should be handled in-house by the committee.
The lawyers, Brian Svoboda and Andrew Warbrock, argued that the ethics office had no right to examine the issue of the 2007 “loan” because it didn’t begin operations until March 2008.
Meeks is also the subject of an ongoing FBI probe into the loan. He did not respond to a request for comment.

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Ethics probe investigates Rep. Meeks over illegal $40,000 gift

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