Action Sports with Leigh Roche

House Republicans say the Export-Import Bank chairman’s tight-lipped responses and a fired employee’s outright refusal to testify at a hearing Tuesday on corruption allegations are all the more reason to close the agency.

“It just highlights that this thing is a problem,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on economic growth, after the hearing.

Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg and the former employee, Johnny Gutierrez, didn’t give lawmakers the answers they wanted about allegations that Gutierrez and three other agency officials accepted gifts and kickbacks from companies interested in doing business through the bank, and that got the GOP members’ blood in a boil.

Tuesday’s hearing on corruption allegations was one of several battles conservative Republicans are waging against the bank as its reauthorization comes up for renewal at the end of September. They say the bank, which finances exports to risky foreign markets, is a prime example of crony capitalism and corporate welfare, adding that the recent allegations of kickbacks and other illicit activities only underscore their point.

Gutierrez worked in Ex-Im’s short-term trade finance division but was fired after being accused of accepting gifts from Florida-based Impex Associates in exchange for the bank’s assistance.

The panel subpoenaed Gutierrez to appear Tuesday, but he declined to offer an opening statement or answer any of Jordan’s questions, citing Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Seeing no point in continuing with the questioning, the chairman dismissed him.

Hochberg offered few specifics about the investigations into Gutierrez and three other bank employees, whose names have not been made public. He said his office’s general counsel told him not to disclose the names of the three on the advice of the inspector general.

Hochberg said only that Gutierrez and two of the other three no longer work for the bank, the third person has been suspended, and that the allegations against the four concern three separate projects.

“I am choosing not to interfere with a criminal investigation,” Hochberg said.

That answer didn’t satisfy Jordan, who repeatedly told Hochberg that no laws prohibited him from revealing the names of the four accused officials and providing the details of the cases to the panel.

“There’s nothing in the law that prevents Mr. Hochberg from telling us what he knows, and he won’t do that,” Jordan said.

He added that the bank’s inspector general is investigating 40 reports of possible fraud involving the bank, although those cases could involve businesses making false claims and don’t necessarily indicate bank officials have done anything wrong; Hochberg said the four bank employees are the only ones he knows who are the subject of investigations.

The panel’s ranking Democrat, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, jumped to Hochberg’s aid.

Cartwright characterized the hearing as “an attempt to unduly influence the vote on the bank’s reauthorization,” and said “calling the bank corrupt for crimes committed against it is what we call blaming the victim.”

“The tea party faction of the Republican Party is holding this reauthorization hostage,” Cartwright said. “This hearing seems to be designed to influence this important upcoming vote with propaganda and political theater.”

Tuesday’s hearing is just one of several attacks Republicans have launched against Ex-Im. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who has led the charge to eliminate the bank, asked Hochberg in a letter on Monday for a long list of documents on Ex-Im’s deals with entities in countries like Russia that face U.S. sanctions....