Curt Weldon - Criminal Investigation and Grand Jury Probe - Lobbying and Family Controversies - Karen Weldon

Karen Weldon

Karen Weldon, Curt Weldon's daughter, received an undergraduate degree in education and a graduate degree in information systems. After college, she spent six years working on "learning and training programs" for the Boeing Company, which has a helicopter plant at the edge of Weldon's district. A spokesman for Weldon said that he did not help his daughter get the job at Boeing, which is a frequent beneficiary of his work in Washington and one of his top campaign donors.

In September 2002, Karen Weldon, then 28 years old, and Charles P. Sexton Jr., about 40 years her senior, started a partnership, Solutions North America (SNA), which she said was "more of a business consultancy than a lobbying firm". Sexton is a political power broker in Weldon's district and the former owner of a security guard company, which he sold in 2003 for $6 million.

In February 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that all three known clients of SNA had ties to Curt Weldon:

• Itera International Energy Corporation, a Russian company, was Solutions' first client. In May 2002, Curt Weldon had led a congressional delegation to Russia and visited Itera. At the beginning of September, Itera paid the expenses for a trip he made to New York City. The next week, Itera told Karen Weldon it would sign a contract with SNA. On September 24, Curt Weldon co-hosted an event at the Library of Congress honoring Itera's chairman. On September 26, Weldon gave a floor speech praising Itera. On September 30, SNA received a $500,000 annual contract with Itera, with $170,000 up front. In November, Itera paid for Karen to join her father on a trip to Eastern Europe and Russia. In January 2003, Itera opened U.S. offices in Jacksonville, Florida, paying for Rep. Weldon to attend the opening.

• Karen Weldon said she found her second client, Saratov Aviation, a Russian aerospace manufacturer, in December 2002, through a family friend, who had worked with her father to foster U.S.-Russian business ties. In January 2003 Curt and Karen Weldon visited Saratov's plant in Russia. After the trip, Saratov signed a contract to pay SNA for $20,000 per month plus a 10% commission, both dependent on new business generated. After the trip, Weldon contacted the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) concerning Saratov's products. In September, Navair and Saratov signed a nonbinding letter of intent that called for Navair to seek funding to develop the Saratov's technology. In November the Saratov contract was rewritten to remove the commission (illegal for federal contractors) and to deliver payment to Solutions Worldwide Inc., another Karen Weldon-Charles Sexton venture. Saratov began paying the new firm $20,000 a month in December 2003.

• Dragomir and Bogoljub Karic, associates of Slobodan Milosevic, paid $240,000 to SNA in March 2003. Weldon had championed the efforts of the two to obtain U.S. visas from the State Department, which had refused them entry. After getting the contract, SNA paid for Weldon's chief of staff Michael J. Conallen Jr. to take a "fact-finding" trip to Serbia in November 2003. Curt Weldon approved the trip, although House ethics rules bar staff from taking official trips paid for by lobbyists or registered agents of foreign companies, the two SNA partners are registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents. Conallen said he reimbursed SNA with his own money in February 2004 after The Times raised questions about the trip.

Intelligence officials have warned Weldon that the Karics are too close to Milosevic, who was accused of leading the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslav federation. But Weldon has praised the Karics, who own a vast empire of banking, telecommunication and other firms, as model business leaders and humanitarians. He has portrayed them as victims of faulty intelligence reports and, in January 2004, asked the CIA to sit down with them and sort things out.