Ted Cruz Potentially Violated Senate Ethic Rules; Fails To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company

Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator of Texas, has "potentially" violated certain ethic rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, Time magazine reported.

Time magazine reported senators are not allowed to receive remuneration for directorships or any other positions outside of their government service and the Senate Ethics Committee advises senators not to serve on any boards because of potential conflicts of interest that might arise during their service on Senate committees of jurisdiction.

The Ethics committee requires full disclosure of all financial holdings and investments, and requires senators to provide information on the location and natures of the business they invest in. The committee is governed by the Ethics in Government Act and routinely reviews and requests clarifications of public disclosure filings from all senators.

The relationship started when Cruz made a $6,000 investment in a Jamaican private equity company his college roommate, David Panton, founded. In 2013, Cruz reported the financial relationship, but failed to mention specific details needed according to senate rules, like full identification of the holding company and its location, Time reported.

This caused the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to look into the report, and required Cruz to file a second disclosure. Cruz told Time that his failure to comply with the Senate rules was an oversight, which he said he fixed last May on his own initiative after his election to the Senate. Cruz said the amended disclosure was part of normal interactions with Senate ethic staffers. He added "there is a routine back and forth with the staff with whom you file the report where they make inquiries."

The current legally-required disclosures arose when Cruz's wife, Heidi, served in George W. Bush's department in 2003. Cruz went out of his way to disclose his positions to the government and to show he had no ties, or power, over the Caribbean holdings, Time reported.

Then Cruz made a mistake. On a financial disclosure filed Oct. 1, Cruz said he has a promissory note from a Kingston-based company called Caribbean Equity Partners Investment Holdings LTD, worth between $100,000 and $250,000; there is no company with that name registered in Jamaica, but there is another Jamaican-based private equity firm called Caribbean Equity Partners in which Cruz is a founding director and shareholder, Time reported.

"In 2011, there was an inadvertent omission of this promissory note, and after a conversation with my college roommate I remembered it," Cruz told Time magazine.

Cruz claims the last time he had ties with the company was when he made his first initial investment of $6,000 for a return of $100,000, which he states he only received $25,000 of, a decade ago. The other $75,000, he said, is in a promissory note, or an IOU, according to Time magazine.

The promissory note lists the name of the holding company as CEP Investments Holdings Limited, not Caribbean Equity Partners Investment Holdings, or the other Jamaican-based private equity firm.

When Cruz did file the promissory note in May, he said he received no income from it and identified it as a "non-publicly traded asset among other holdings," and went on to list it as a "Promissory Note from CEP investments holdings LTD" even though Caribbean Equity Partners has no connection to Constellation Energy Partners, the American company with the ticker symbol CEP, according to Time magazine.

The Ethics staff told Cruz to go in a amend "the nature of the promissory note, the entity that had issued it, the city in which the entity was located and the date the note had been issued," which Cruz did on Oct. 1 but that filing contained numerous errors like misnaming the holding company, incorrectly saying it was domiciled in Jamaica, and giving the wrong date for the promissory note, Time reported.