A former official at the U.S. Export-Import Bank pleaded guilty on Wednesday to accepting bribes in exchange financing by the agency, the Justice Department announced.
Johnny Gutierrez, a former Ex-Im loan officer, admitted to accepting 19 bribes totaling more than $78,000 in exchange for "recommending the approval" of financing for projects that would otherwise have been rejected, DOJ said.
Specifically, Gutierrez admitted that he intentionally ignored the fact that one company had previously defaulted in 10 previous transactions guaranteed by the bank, causing the Ex-Im Bank to lose almost $20 million. Despite these defaults, Gutierrez accepted bribes to continue to recommend the approval of the company’s loan applications. Additionally, Gutierrez admitted that he accepted bribes from a financing broker to expedite applications submitted by the broker, and that he privately assisted the broker to improve its applications before submission to the bank. In exchange, Gutierrez was to receive half of the broker’s profit on the transactions financed by the bank. Further, Gutierrez disclosed to the broker inside information about financing applications submitted to the Ex-Im Bank, so that the broker could solicit the applicants as clients.
One of the companies that solicited Gutierrez’s illicit support was Florida-based Impex Associates, according to a report last year in the Wall Street Journal.
Impex ramped up its operations a decade ago, selling U.S. construction equipment and supplies to developers, mainly in Latin America, according to Ex-Im Bank records and the 2006 lawsuit filed against Mr. Diaz by a former business associate, Rama Vyasulu.
The agency has guaranteed numerous Impex deals, stretching back to at least 2002, according to agency records. For example, at one meeting in June 2007, the agency's credit committee agreed to guarantee financing for an Impex project worth between $1 million and $5 million in Mexico, and a similarly sized equipment sale to the Dominican Republic.
The agency has also backed Impex deals in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos, but not all projects were in Latin America. The agency in 2005 talked up its decision to guarantee a $30 million Impex construction project to build a housing community for oil and gas workers in Doha, Qatar.
Gutierrez’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 20.
His guilty plea comes as conservatives in Congress are pushing to let Ex-Im’s funding expire. According to Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), one of the bank’s chief critics, more indictments regarding employee misconduct at Ex-Im could be forthcoming.