Board complicates Weller asset claim

Publication: The Chicago Tribune

Jim Tankersley
September 15, 2007

WASHINGTON - Without fanfare, the wife of Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) formed a not-for-profit corporation this summer dedicated to helping children in her native Guatemala. Her board of directors includes Weller's mother, his brother and a New York man who has partnered with Weller to buy land in Nicaragua.

Analysts say the Zury Rios Fund, named after Weller's wife, raises questions about whether Weller's financial dealings overlap with his wife's -- and whether he can legally exclude her assets from his congressional financial disclosure form.

Zury Rios de Weller is a member of the Guatemalan Congress -- and the daughter of a reportedly wealthy former Guatemalan dictator -- who married Jerry Weller in 2004. In June, she registered her eponymous fund as an American non-profit with the state of Illinois.

House rules require its members to disclose their spouses' finances. Weller is one of two congressmen to claim a rare exemption from that requirement, because he says he has no knowledge of his wife's finances, has not contributed to them and does not expect to benefit from them.

Disclosure experts say the existence of the non-profit and the composition of its board make the exemption "problematic" for Weller to defend.

"The fact that one of his business partners is involved, that only adds to" an already difficult task of proving separate finances, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government-transparency watchdog group.

"The fact that his family members are involved would suggest that he has a pretty good idea of what's going on," Allison added. "Does he just discuss the weather with his family?"

Weller's office did not respond directly to repeated inquiries this week about what role, if any, Weller played in creating the Zury Rios Fund and whether he is actively involved in its operation or fundraising.

Instead, Weller issued an e-mail statement through a spokesman: "Mrs. Weller is often asked to play a role in improving rural health care and fighting poverty in her native country. Friends encouraged her to set up this type of organization for this purpose. The congressman thought it was a good idea too."

Incorporation papers state the organization's purpose is "to support health and education projects as well as advance opportunity for women and children in Guatemala." They state that the fund started with no money but that it expects to actively raise money and take in more than $10,000 this year.

The papers list Zury Rios de Weller as chairwoman and one of four members of the board of directors. The other three directors are Marilyn Weller, Jerry Weller's mother; Douglas Weller, the congressman's brother, who is listed as having the same address as Zury Rios de Weller; and Karl Rozak of New York, who has partnered with Jerry Weller on at least two land purchases in Nicaragua.

One of those purchases is among the seven Nicaraguan deals that Weller has failed to report on his congressional financial disclosure, as the Tribune reported last week.

Rozak did not respond to an e-mail requesting an interview this week. Weller has repeatedly declined to comment on the apparent omissions of Nicaraguan transactions from his disclosure forms.

Weller attached a letter to his 2006 disclosure form explaining his three-years-running practice of excluding his wife's finances from his report. He said he had a prominent Washington law firm review the couple's financial arrangement and that a staff member of the House ethics committee indicated to him that it qualified for the exemption he claimed.

Other members of Congress have struggled to defend their exemptions in the past when challenged. Stanley Brand, a former House counsel who is now a Washington lawyer, said the Zury Rios Fund and its structure could complicate Weller's case for the exemption.

Brand compared the situation to that of former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who drew scrutiny and a House ethics investigation as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984, after she omitted her husband's finances from her filings.

The arguments in cases like that involving Ferraro, Brand said, came down to details as minute as the cost of groceries in the family refrigerator: "Who paid for what, and does the other know about it?"