Oversight Subpoenas Ex-Im Bank Following Months of Stonewalling Congress

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, (R-CA), today subpoenaed Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) for documents the Bank has been withholding from Congress for months. Additionally, in a joint letter also signed by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), the Oversight Committee lays out the possibility for the use of the compulsory process in acquiring testimony from Ex-Im Bank officials. Specifically, the Oversight Committee subpoena requires that the Bank produce unredacted transcripts of meetings of the Export-Import Bank’s Board of Directors.

“Having submitted a proposal to reauthorize the Bank and increase its lending authority, you should expect to provide Congress with unfettered access to the information it needs to evaluate that request, including information relating to Bank operations,” wrote the Members. “However, redacted transcripts made available by the Bank reveal very little about those matters; the Bank redacted virtually every discussion among directors and staff exploring why the Bank could lawfully participate in specific financing transactions.”

The subpoena compels the following: unredacted transcripts from meetings of the Bank’s Board of Directors and Audit Committee since January 1, 2012.

The Oversight Committee held a hearing, “Examining Allegations of Corruption at the Export-Import Bank,” on July 29, 2014, in which an official accused of corruption at the bank plead the Fifth Amendment.

Read the letter here.