The organizer of the controversial Caribbean junkets whose actions helped to force Rep. Charles Rangel to step down as chairman of the powerful House tax-writing committee pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about the corporate freebies.
Karl Rodney, publisher of the New York Carib News, admitted he submitted documents to Congress in 2007 and 2008 falsely claiming that the Carib News Foundation was the only sponsor of Rangel’s trips to conferences at resorts in Antigua and St. Maarten.
But prosecutors found that Rodney had solicited money from several corporations as well as the governments of Antigua and St. Maarten to help pay for Rangel’s and other lawmakers’ trips.
House ethics investigators found that Rangel or his staff knew corporations helped pay for the conference and slammed him for violating ethics rules.
Rodney broke a federal law instituted in 2007 following the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. The law requires full disclosure of corporate sponsors of legislators’ trips.
Rodney could have faced up to five years in prison for making a false instrument to Congress. But as part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to seek a sentence of more than six months.
Prosecutors also agreed not to file charges against Rodney’s wife, who was eyed in the ethics flap.
The House Ethics Committee probe found that the Carib News Foundation, in an April 23, 2007, letter, solicited American Airlines to donate 90 round-trip first-class and coach tickets to its conferences that year in Antigua. The letter was copied to Rangel.
But when a congressional ethics lawyer e-mailed a Carib Foundation staffer asking whether other firms were paying for the trips, the reply was “no” — contradicting conference documents and testimony from Verizon and other co-sponsors.
Rangel attended that junket and another one in 2008.
The freebies violated the House gift-ban rules and Rangel was admonished for it.
As a result of the junket foul-up, Rangel relinquished his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee under pressure. Republicans had threatened to bring an embarrassing resolution to the floor calling for his ouster.
The Carib case turned out to be just the beginning of Rangel’s ethics woes.
A separate congressional probe resulted in the dean of the New York delegation being censured for a host of ethical transgressions on Dec. 2.
The two-year probe found a “pattern” of rule-breaking, including dodging taxes, concealing assets and misusing his post to raise money for the City College center that bears his name — all first reported by The Post.
The investigations left him $2 million in debt for his legal defense.
But Rangel ran for re-election and won easily in his Harlem district.