The press and the Opposition must ask: did Baku pay for Joseph, Konrad, Keith and Kurt to visit?

This is how things are done. Ten members of the US Congress and 32 members of their staff have been found to have had all their expenses paid by SOCAR, the state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan (the very one which is setting up shop in Malta with the new power station) on a visit to that country in 2013, and to have received gifts while there. And all hell broke loose because of that yesterday in The Washington Post.

The story was immediately covered in The Texas Tribune, too, because four of those members of congress are from Texas, given that the state has a particular interest in oil and gas.

And our prime minister visits Baku with his energy minister Konrad Mizzi, his head of secretariat Keith Schembri and his spokesman Kurt Farrugia, and there are no questions either in the press or in parliament as to who paid for that trip.

It’s tough explaining to Maltese people, with their ‘Malta qatt ma rrifjutat qamh’ freeloading mentality, why these things are wrong. So I’ll just reproduce the report in The Texas Tribune (the one in The Washington Post is truly lengthy), but first I’ll have to point out that ‘secretly’ in the first line does not refer to the trip itself but to the fact that Azerbaijan paid for it.

The scandal is not because they went to Azerbaijan and nobody knew about it (it was a conference and public knowledge), but because they were SOCAR’s guests and received gifts. This is against the law in the United States.

The story is beneath. It would make a good topic for Joseph Muscat’s next encounter with the US Ambassador, should conversation otherwise dry up. “Your country doesn’t allow your politicians to accept presents and hospitality from SOCAR and Ilham Aliyev? Eeee ara how strange.”

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The state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan secretly funded an all-expenses-paid trip to a conference at Baku on the Caspian Sea in 2013 for 10 members of Congress — including four from Texas — and 32 staff members, according to a confidential ethics report obtained by The Washington Post.

Three former top aides to President Obama appeared as speakers at the conference.

Lawmakers and their staff members received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of travel expenses, silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs valued at $2,500 to $10,000, according to the ethics report. Airfare for the lawmakers and some of their spouses cost $112,899, travel invoices show.

The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as SOCAR, allegedly funneled $750,000 through nonprofit corporations based in the United States to conceal the source of the funding for the conference in the former Soviet nation, according to the 70-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative arm of the House.

The report reflects the most extensive investigation undertaken by the ethics office, which was created seven years ago in response to a number of scandals on Capitol Hill, including lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s illegal funding of lawmakers’ trips.

The nonprofit corporations allegedly filed false statements with Congress swearing that they were sponsoring the conference. The findings have been referred to the House Committee on Ethics for investigation of possible violations of congressional rules and federal laws that bar foreign governments from trying to influence U.S. policy.

The lawmakers who took the trip were Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Rubén Hinojosa (D-Tex.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), Ted Poe (R-Tex.) and then-Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.).