Judge drops two charges against US Representative Cuellar, accused of taking bribes from Azerbaijan
A judge in Texas has dropped two charges against US Representative Henry Cuellar, who has been accused of accepting bribes on behalf of Azerbaijan. The judge also ruled that the trial be delayed until 2026.
Cuellar and his wife Imelda Cuellar were charged in 2024 with 14 counts of bribery, after investigators said the two had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Mexican bank and an unidentified state-owned Azerbaijani petrol company, previously verified by OC Media to have been SOCAR.
The two still face 12 counts, including bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering.
Cuellar and his wife have maintained their innocence. The criminal case notwithstanding, Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas, was re-elected later that year.
Prosecutors said they were dropping the two charges in line with a recent memorandum from US Attorney General Pam Bondi, which stipulated that the focus of criminal cases related to violations of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) be ‘limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors’.
There was nonetheless some speculation that the charges being dropped could be connected to the increased ties between Azerbaijan and the US, highlighted by the recent meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and US President Donald Trump in Washington. One of the key results of the meeting was an agreement to create a US-company managed road, dubbed the Trump Route, to connect Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan, through Armenian territory.
The prominent Armenian lobby group the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) protested the decision, saying that Cuellar ‘must be held accountable’.
Since the charges were initially announced, three others have pleaded guilty in connection to the case, including Irada Akhoundova, who had long served as the president of the nonprofit Houston-Baku Sister City Association.
Akhoundova pleaded guilty to violating FARA by ‘unlawfully acting as an agent of the Azerbaijani government and a state-run oil company’. She admitted to helping transfer a $60,000 payment to Imelda Cuellar on behalf of the Azerbaijani government.
Nate Ostiller
