Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Rep. Mollohan's 'Cheat River' Deal Probed
A land deal involving a Democratic congressman and a defense contractor he helped receive a federal contract has come under scrutiny.
Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, a 12-term congressman from West Virginia, last year jointly purchased a 300-acre farm along his state’s Cheat River along with Dale R. McBride, chief executive of FMW Composite Systems Inc. of Bridgeport, W.Va.
Mollohan’s real estate holdings and financial disclosures have drawn the attention of federal investigators, and the farm purchase "is the most direct tie yet disclosed between Rep. Mollohan and a beneficiary of the federal spending he has steered toward his home state,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The $2.1 million contract awarded to McBride’s company was part of a much larger appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005 to fund the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mollohan is a senior member of the House subcommittee that controlled the legislation.
The funds were to be used to develop lightweight payload pallets for space-shuttle missions.
Over the past five years, Rep. Mollohan steered more than $200 million to a network of nonprofit groups in West Virginia, often through narrow spending provisions known as earmarks.
The Journal reported earlier this month that executives of these groups and companies had contributed regularly to Rep. Mollohan's campaigns and his family foundation.
In a Senate hearing in 2003, then-NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe denied seeking $15.5 million in earmarks that had been directed to the Institute for Scientific Research and other contractors in Mollohan's congressional district.
Now Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have begun asking questions in Washington and West Virginia about Mollohan’s holdings and whether they were properly disclosed, according to the Journal.
Mollohan has acknowledged that he may have made "inadvertent” mistakes in financial disclosure forms.
But the federal inquiry has widened to include a probe of Mollohan’s business ties to people who have benefited from earmarks, according to sources who spoke to the Journal.
Mollohan – who has resigned from his post as senior Democrat on the House Ethics Committee to focus on combating the charges – said "any claim whatsoever” that investments such as the farm "are in any way related to my actions as a member of Congress is categorically false.”
McBride said he and longtime friend Mollohan had spent several summers together on a farm and had jointly purchased the Cheat River farm for $900,000 "so that our kids and grandkids could have” some of those memories, and not as an investment.
A land deal involving a Democratic congressman and a defense contractor he helped receive a federal contract has come under scrutiny.
Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, a 12-term congressman from West Virginia, last year jointly purchased a 300-acre farm along his state’s Cheat River along with Dale R. McBride, chief executive of FMW Composite Systems Inc. of Bridgeport, W.Va.
Mollohan’s real estate holdings and financial disclosures have drawn the attention of federal investigators, and the farm purchase "is the most direct tie yet disclosed between Rep. Mollohan and a beneficiary of the federal spending he has steered toward his home state,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The $2.1 million contract awarded to McBride’s company was part of a much larger appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005 to fund the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mollohan is a senior member of the House subcommittee that controlled the legislation.
The funds were to be used to develop lightweight payload pallets for space-shuttle missions.
Over the past five years, Rep. Mollohan steered more than $200 million to a network of nonprofit groups in West Virginia, often through narrow spending provisions known as earmarks.
The Journal reported earlier this month that executives of these groups and companies had contributed regularly to Rep. Mollohan's campaigns and his family foundation.
In a Senate hearing in 2003, then-NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe denied seeking $15.5 million in earmarks that had been directed to the Institute for Scientific Research and other contractors in Mollohan's congressional district.
Now Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have begun asking questions in Washington and West Virginia about Mollohan’s holdings and whether they were properly disclosed, according to the Journal.
Mollohan has acknowledged that he may have made "inadvertent” mistakes in financial disclosure forms.
But the federal inquiry has widened to include a probe of Mollohan’s business ties to people who have benefited from earmarks, according to sources who spoke to the Journal.
Mollohan – who has resigned from his post as senior Democrat on the House Ethics Committee to focus on combating the charges – said "any claim whatsoever” that investments such as the farm "are in any way related to my actions as a member of Congress is categorically false.”
McBride said he and longtime friend Mollohan had spent several summers together on a farm and had jointly purchased the Cheat River farm for $900,000 "so that our kids and grandkids could have” some of those memories, and not as an investment.
