US says Exxon violated Russia sanctions under Tillerson
President sought to stack his cabinet with titans of industry, but entanglement shows flipside of arrangement
Two of President Donald Trump’s most senior cabinet members have become embroiled in an unusual legal battle over whether ExxonMobil under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s leadership violated US sanctions against Russia.
Treasury officials fined ExxonMobil $2 million (Dh7.3 million) last week for signing eight business agreements in 2014 with Igor Sechin, the chief executive of Rosneft, an energy giant partially owned by the Russian government. The business agreements came less than a month after the US banned companies from doing business with him.
Hours after the fine was announced, Exxon filed a legal complaint against the Treasury Department — naming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the lead defendant — while calling the actions “unlawful” and “fundamentally unfair.”
Trump sought to stack his cabinet with titans of industry, hoping that their corporate expertise would help them confront global problems. But this new entanglement shows the flipside of such an arrangement.
Cabinet secretaries may bring into office unresolved questions about corporate practices that are now subject to scrutiny by the government they help run. In this case, an agency led by one of Trump’s top advisers is alleging improper behaviour from a company that was run by another.
The Treasury Department informed Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan of the impending Exxon fine, and he told Tillerson, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “The secretary recused himself,” she said. “He is living up to the ethical commitments he agreed to when he became secretary of state.”
A Treasury spokesman said Tillerson did not personally sign the documents sealing the agreements with Rosneft.
But the Treasury said top Exxon officials showed a “reckless disregard for” the sanctions against Sechin, adding the company’s “senior-most executives knew of Sechin’s status” and that they “caused significant harm to the Ukraine-related sanctions” by engaging in business agreements with him.
Tillerson and Sechin have had a long-standing relationship, which was critical for ExxonMobil’s ability to maintain its access to Russia’s lucrative oil industry.
$700,000 [Tillerson has] plenty of reasons to stay on the job, and all of them are important to America. There’s a desperate need for American leadership in the world and that’s where the secretary’s focusing his attention.” is the amount Trump says acting FBI director Andrew McCabe got from Clinton for his wife