Rangel Will Face House Ethics Committee Inquiries

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Standards of Official Conduct voted on Wednesday to begin an ethics investigation into the personal finances and fund-raising of Representative Charles B. Rangel.

Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat whose position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee makes him one of the most powerful members of Congress, has faced an assortment of allegations during the past three months: accepting several rent-stabilized apartments from a Manhattan developer; using his Congressional stationery to solicit donations for a City University of New York center named after him; and failing to report — and pay taxes on — $75,000 in rental income he made from a villa in the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Rangel paid more than $10,000 in back taxes last week to the federal, state and city governments, explaining that the mistakes in his taxes were inadvertent oversights. He has repeatedly said that he is confident that an ethics committee investigation — which he had requested — will find that he did not intentionally violate any laws or Congressional rules.

Read more: (David Kocieniewski, “House Ethics Committee Votes to Begin an Inquiry on Rangel,” The New York Times, 9/25/08)