Facing a battle with the Peruvian government over a smelting operation that has caused severe environmental damage to a town in the Andean mountains, the Renco Group and its owner, billionaire Ira Rennert, assembled a formidable lobbying team in a matter of months that includes eight former government officials from five different Washington firms, and has succeeded in getting members of Congress from both parties and the Obama administration to aid it in its cause.

Renco Group’s hiring spree, uncovered using Sunlight’s Lobbying Registration Tracker, shows how private interests strategically employ lobbyists with insider connections to current officials to influence public policy. However, because lobbyists are not required to disclose which members of Congress they’ve contacted, and because none of Renco Group’s lobbyists would comment for this story, we can only note the connections between the lobbyists and the members of Congress who acted on the company’s behalf.

Among its hires, the Renco Group retained the services of a pair of lobbyists with ties to Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., and House Financial Services Committee chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala. In January, both lawmakers wrote letters to the Treasury Department about Doe Run Peru (DRP), Renco’s subsidiary, and its dispute with the Peruvian government, Treasury letters responding to the congressmen show.

In February, eleven days after his former chief of staff, Kerry McKenney, registered to lobby on Renco’s behalf, Payne had a letter entered into the Congressional Record addressed to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which he expressed a “serious concern” about Lima’s treatment of Doe Run Peru and the Renco Group.

"Secretary Geithner has indicated that they have approached the Peruvian government about the issue," Laverne Alexander, Payne's current chief of staff, said.

At issue is a complicated financial and environmental dispute involving a metal smelter that began operations in 1922 in the town of La Oroya, Peru. The Blacksmith Institute, an organization that focuses on industrial pollution in the developing world, called La Oroya one of the ten most polluted places on earth in 2006—a 2005 study found that nearly all of the children in the town of 35,000 under six suffered from lead poisoning. When it purchased the facility in 1997, Renco promised to remediate some of the contamination, but has received numerous extensions from the Peruvian government, and has yet to complete the work.

The company claims that Lima has failed to uphold its own obligations under the environmental cleanup agreement that was part of the terms under which the smelter was sold to Renco.

The Renco Group is no stranger to environmental controversy—in 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency rated its MagCorp subsidiary, based in Utah, as one of the biggest polluters in the country, and in 2010, its Doe Run subsidiary, based in St. Louis, agreed to spend $65 million to bring the operations of its Missouri facilities into compliance with environmental regulations, and agreed to a $7 million civil penalty for breaking a series of environmental laws.

In the dispute with Peru, members of Congress sided with the company, and pressured the Treasury Department to do the same. In response to the letters from Bachus and Payne, Marisa Lago, the Assistant Treasury Secretary for International Markets and Development, wrote on February 15 that, “Our embassy has been in touch with the Government of Peru on a number of different occasions with respect to this case, emphasizing that we expect it to make a good faith effort to work with DRP to resolve the pending financial and environmental issues.”

Those issues are daunting. Operations at DRP’s smelter in La Oroya, Peru, have been shut down for two years as the company has unsuccessfully sought to borrow money to resume work there. Meanwhile, the Renco Group still faces a lawsuit filed on behalf of bondholders who allege the company misrepresented the environmental liabilities of its MagCorp subsidiary.

Lima’s bankruptcy agency is now considering whether to restructure the idle company or liquidate its assets; Doe Run Peru has filed its intent to commence arbitration through the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement. That trade deal allows for a neutral resolution of disputes though an international arbitration court, a fact mentioned by Lago in her letters to Payne and Bachus.

In its lobbying effort, Renco Group hired Palmer C. Hamilton, a former Treasury official and banking lobbyist who hosted a fundraiser with and contributed $18,000 to the campaigns of fellow Alabaman Spencer Bachus. The company also hired former Ways and Means Chairman Jim McCrery, R-N.J., who, as ranking member in the 109th Congress, was instrumental in securing passage of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, and Timothy Keeler, the former chief of staff of the United States Trade Representative office, whose responsibilities included overseeing the implementation of free trade agreements. Over a span of 82 days beginning in November 2010, Renco Group hired eight former government officials working at five different Washington firms. So far, those firms have reported receiving $245,000 to lobby.

Renco Group’s headquarters are in New York, as is Fair Field, the largest mansion in the United States and the home of the company’s owner, billionaire Ira Rennert, ranked by Forbes in 2010 as the 144th wealthiest man in the world, with a fortune estimated at $5.3 billion.

For more on this story, read the complete report and background information at the Reporting Group site.

Privately paid travel may have fallen over the past year, and more precisely since 2005, but some lawmakers are still taking lavish trips to exotic locales. And some of them might be breaking the new ethics rules that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated there would be a “zero tolerance” policy. The New York Post has an exposé on a privately paid trip (not everyone stopped taking them) to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten taken by six members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The Post accuses the lawmakers of accepting travel from an entity that employs a lobbyist, going on a trip that included lobbyists, and failing to properly file their disclosures.

Officially the trip was sponsored by the Carib News Foundation for a conference in St. Maarten. The Foundation, however, accepts contributions from corporate sponsors, some just for the Foundation’s operations and others specifically for the conference. These corporate sponsors included Citigroup, AT&T, Verizon, Pfizer, Macy's, and American Airlines. Since, ethics rules forbid the acceptance of travel from an entity that employs a lobbyist, and all of these companies employ lobbyists, the question is whether a sponsor of the Carib News Foundation and their conference needs to be listed as a sponsor of the trip. This is the primary question at the center of possible ethics violations.

According to the Post, the Foundation, in filling out the proper disclosure forms, checked the box, "I represent that the trip sponsor(s) has not accepted from any other source funds earmarked directly or indirectly to finance any aspect of the trip." This statement is not properly backed up by statements made by Carib News Foundation CEO Karl Rodney and representatives of the corporate sponsors:

[I]n his opening remarks in St. Maarten, Rodney, who has organized 13 annual conferences, thanked all of the corporate sponsors by name.

He expressed gratitude to AT&T for its sponsorship at all prior conferences and singled out Citigroup as being the biggest conference sponsor this year.

"And so we want to say thanks to Citi," said Rodney. "It's a great team to have working, and great partners."

Citigroup Vice President Michael Flanigan, who attended the St. Maarten event and is listed as a member of the conference planning committee, didn't try to hide his company's association with the event during a speech he gave to attendees.

"This year was significant for Citi," Flanigan said, speaking to a half-full room. "For the first time we are the lead sponsor of this premier event."

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct states that:

...when a nonprofit organization pays for travel with donations that were earmarked, either formally or informally, for the trip, each such donor is deemed a “private source” for the trip and (1) must be publicly disclosed as a trip sponsor on the applicable travel forms and (2) must itself be required to satisfy the above standards on proper sources of travel expenses.

It appears, through the indirect admission of Rodney and corporate representatives, that corporate funds were used to finance the conference. The question remains as to whether the conference counts as part of “the trip.” Rodney states that the Foundation funds 50% of the conference, and it is possible that all the funds earmarked for the lawmaker trips came from the Foundation’s coffers. The Committee has further rules relating to the involvement of corporate sponsors:

[I]n order for a Member or staff person to receive Committee approval to accept officially-connected travel from a private source, the source must certify to the Committee that it has not accepted from any other source funds earmarked directly or indirectly to finance any aspect of the trip

“[A]ny aspect of the trip” certainly sounds as though the conference would count as part of the trip. Looking at the definitions in another disputed matter of ethics violations in the Post story puts doubt into what could define a “trip” or “aspect of [a] trip”.

The Post also points out that the presence of lobbyists at the conference may violate the rules banning lawmakers from accepting travel in which lobbyists accompany them. The use of simple language is where legal loopholes are born. And this is no exception:

In addition to prohibiting Members and staff from accepting officially-connected travel from a private source that retains or employs lobbyists or agents of a foreign principal, for most trips the travel provisions of the gift rule prohibit Members and staff from accepting travel from a private source if the official will be accompanied by a lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal on “any segment” of the trip (House Rule 25, clause 5(c)(1)(A)). The term “segment” means any part(s) of the travel to and from the destination, rather than the event itself or location being visited that is the purpose of the trip. Whether a lobbyist may be involved in planning, organizing, requesting, or arranging a trip also depends on the source of the travel expenses.

So there you go. A “segment” does not include the segment of the trip that includes the purpose of the trip. If a “segment” of a trip is only defined by the coming and going part of “trip,” does this extend to “any aspect” of said trip? Doubtfully, considering the sponsor, the Foundation, is paying not just for airfare, but for food and lodging.

This trip is certainly a case of questionable twisting of ethics rules, if not an outright violation. The loopholes evident make the restrictions placed on privately paid travel easy to circumnavigate, and thus ought to addressed.