Land-Swap Plan Causes Trouble For Congressman Renzi
Land-Swap Plan
Causes Trouble
For Congressman
Mr. Renzi Offers Field
To Mining Companies;
Grand Jury Is Active
By JOHN R. WILKE - Wall Street Journal
April 21, 2007; Page A1
SUPERIOR, Ariz. — As they dig for nickel, copper and other commodities in the far corners of the earth, the world’s largest mining companies, Rio Tinto PLC and BHP Billiton Ltd., are used to solving geological problems. Here, though, the problems they encountered were political.
North America’s largest copper lode is believed to be buried more than a mile beneath Apache Leap, the stark red cliffs that loom above this storied Old West town about an hour east of Phoenix. Resolution Copper Co., a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, wants to mine it. But first it needs Congress to approve a federal land exchange, under which Resolution would swap 5,000 acres of private land for 3,000 acres of public land near its planned mine.
In exchange for supporting the bill, the local congressman, Rick Renzi, a Republican, insisted on something in return: He wanted Resolution to buy, as part of the land swap, a 480-acre alfalfa field near his hometown of Sierra Vista, according to documents and people involved in the deal.
Resolution executives refused. For starters, they thought the land was overpriced, people close to the deal say. More troubling, they discovered it was owned by Mr. Renzi’s former business partner, these people say.
Resolution wasn’t the only party troubled by the congressman’s demands. His chief of staff resigned and began cooperating secretly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to witnesses and others close to the case. The FBI began a preliminary inquiry that was first reported in October, just before Mr. Renzi was elected to a third term.
That investigation has now become a formal public-corruption probe by a federal grand jury in Tucson. On Thursday, the grand jury authorized a search warrant of a Renzi family business.
Investigators have uncovered evidence that Mr. Renzi received a cash payment from his former business partner, funneled through a family wine company, after a second investor group pursuing an unrelated land swap agreed to pay $4 million for the alfalfa field, according to people contacted in the course of the two-year investigation.
Mr. Renzi denies any wrongdoing and says that he intends to cooperate with the investigation. The search of the family business, he said in a statement Friday, is “the first step toward getting the truth out.” His lawyer says the cash payment he received was to settle an unrelated debt.
The case could add fuel to the firestorm over the Bush administration’s firing of federal prosecutors late last year. Paul Charlton, the U.S. Attorney who had been overseeing the case, was among those dismissed at the behest of the White House.
A spokesman for Mr. Renzi dismissed as “a political hatchet job” the suggestion that Mr. Charlton’s firing was connected to the probe of Mr. Renzi. On Thursday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress that none of the dismissals were politically motivated, and said the Justice Department is committed to battling corruption.
The Renzi case is the latest in a wave of public-corruption investigations of local and federal officials. At least five members of Congress — three Republicans and two Democrats — are now under federal criminal scrutiny. Two former members, both Republicans, have gone to prison in the past year. Voter polls have suggested that the investigations were one reason Republicans lost control of Congress last November.
The Renzi case spotlights the potential for abuse in the murky world of legislated land swaps, which have become more common in recent years. Thousands of acres of public land worth hundreds of millions of dollars change hands each year through narrow special-interest bills. There is little public scrutiny, and often no vote is recorded in Congress. Some swaps serve public goals, such as protecting wild habitat. Others enrich private interests at taxpayers’ expense, sometimes sidestepping federal rules in the process.
The proposed Arizona land exchange would sweep aside a 1954 order by President Eisenhower protecting national forest in the area, including Oak Flats, a campground located above the proposed mine. “Yet another piece of land that was being ‘permanently’ protected is being put on the block because a private interest has use for it,” Janine Blaeloch, director of the nonprofit Western Lands Project, complained to Congress last year.
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