Ross selling stake in shipping firm

Senator calls for probe of commerce secretary’s holdings

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speaks at the annual CBI conference in London, Monday Nov. 6, 2017.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speaks at the annual CBI conference in London, Monday Nov. 6, 2017.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he will "probably not" maintain his stake in a shipping firm that does business with a Russian company with ties to the son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an oligarch under U.S. sanctions.

"I've been actually selling it anyway, but that isn't because of this," Ross said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Ross said in a government ethics disclosure filed after his nomination that he held an investment worth as much as $10 million in shipping company Navigator Holdings. But news organizations including the New York Times alleged over the weekend that he did not disclose that the company's clients include a Russian energy company called Sibur whose owners include Putin's son-in-law and the oligarch, who is close to the Kremlin and has been sanctioned by the U.S. government.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called on the Commerce Department's inspector general to open an investigation into the matter, which concerns Ross' ownership stake in a shipping company that did business with a Russian firm.

"In concealing his interest in these shipping companies -- and his ongoing financial relationship with Russian oligarchs -- Secretary Ross misled me, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the American people," Blumenthal said in a statement. "Secretary Ross' financial disclosures are like a Russian nesting doll, with blatant conflicts of interest carefully hidden within seemingly innocuous holding companies."

It is unclear whether Ross violated federal guidelines for ethics disclosures by not revealing the connections, and he isn't alleged to have violated any law.

"We have no business ties to those Russian individuals who are under sanction," Ross said in the Bloomberg TV interview. Ross said he had nothing to do with the company's negotiations with Sibur but that "there's nothing whatsoever wrong with Navigator having a deal with them."

Ross insisted he made proper disclosures in terms of his own connections in financial disclosure forms to the Office of Government Ethics. "There is no conflict of interest," he said, because "we don't regulate shipping."

The Commerce Department said in an unattributed statement Sunday that Ross was unaware who owned the Russian firm and has never met the owners, and that he has recused himself from transoceanic shipping matters.

There is no requirement for executive branch nominees to disclose clients or customers of a business in which they're a shareholder. The disclosure requirement only applies to direct payments related to a nominee.

Walter Shaub, who was the director of the Office of Government Ethics at the time Ross filed his disclosure, signed off on the document. Shaub has since resigned and become a public critic of Donald Trump's administration and its ethics practices.

The group hasn't made the documents publicly available. Shaub didn't immediately return messages on Sunday. Spokesmen for the White House didn't immediately respond to inquiries.

On Sunday, news organizations that are part of the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, whose partners include the Times, published reports based on documents leaked from the Bermuda law firm Appleby to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that were shared with the consortium. The consortium has termed the leak the "Paradise Papers" because of its similarity to the "Panama Papers" leak in 2016, from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, for which the organization won a Pulitzer Prize.

The Appleby documents included details of Ross' stake in Navigator Holdings and that its clients include Sibur, according to the Times.

Offshore funds are often used to escape high taxes and their use is not necessarily illegal, though when they are being used by the same people who set those tax rates, it tends to raise eyebrows. The majority of the individuals featured in the leaks come from the U.S., followed by Britain.

The material could end up being used as evidence in investigations looking into links between members of the Trump administration and entities affiliated with the Russian government.

In Britain, the revelations could support accusations that the ruling Conservative Party indirectly benefited from some of the offshore tax haven funds it has publicly condemned.

Among the individuals or groups who are named in the 13.4 million documents is Queen Elizabeth II, whose private estate invested over $12 million offshore, according to the reports. Other documents in the leak refer to an aide of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a major donor of Britain's Conservative party and a Russian oligarch.

Last year, the Panama Papers exposed a number of companies, top officials, oligarchs and politicians. At the time, the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca was being portrayed by law firm industry representatives as an outlier. The companies where most of the new leak's documents originated from are generally considered to be industry leaders, however.

Information for this article was contributed by Bill Allison, Margaret Talev, Sahil Kapur, Andrew Mayeda, David Carey and Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg News; and by Rick Noack of The Washington Post.

A Section on 11/07/2017

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