For example:
* After a Russian aerospace manufacturer hired Karen Weldon's firm for $20,000 a month plus 10% of any new business it generated, Rep. Weldon pitched the company's saucer-shaped drone to the U.S. Navy, which signed a letter of intent to invest in the technology. And Weldon, who chairs a subcommittee that oversees $60 billion in military acquisitions, has been working to get funding for the project, Navy officials say. A lawyer for Solutions said the firm did not collect the finder's fee and it was later removed from the contract. Federal law bars companies from paying commissions to lobbyists on government contracts.
* The congressman helped round up 30 congressional colleagues for a dinner at the Library of Congress to honor the chairman of a Russian natural gas company, Itera International Energy Corp., that had just agreed to pay his daughter's firm $500,000 a year to "create good public relations." Records show Solutions North America helped arrange the privately funded affair for the company, which has been trying to improve its image with U.S. officials after questions were raised about its acquisition of vast natural gas fields in post-Soviet Russia.
* Karen Weldon's firm paid for her father's chief of staff to take a "fact-finding" trip to Serbia, where he met with U.S. Embassy officials about the Karics' visa problems. The congressman approved the arrangement, travel records show. House ethics rules bar members or staff from taking official trips paid for by lobbyists or registered agents of foreign companies. The chief of staff, Michael J. Conallen Jr., said he reimbursed Solutions with his own money last week after The Times raised questions about the trip.
Conallen said the congressman's actions on behalf of Karen Weldon's clients posed no ethical concerns.
"I just don't think there's anything strange about it," he said. "If Curt wanted to he could snap his fingers and divert a lot of business to Karen, and that hasn't happened."
Karen Weldon has a partner in Solutions, Charles P. Sexton Jr., 67, the former finance chairman of Rep. Weldon's campaigns. Neither has lobbied Weldon nor asked for his help, Conallen said.
"The fact that they have contracts with these clients hasn't influenced anything Curt has done," he said.
The congressman was advocating for the Karics and other Eastern European business interests long before his daughter opened her firm, Conallen said.
