Treasury fines ExxonMobil $2 million for violating Russia sanctions while Tillerson was CEO
The Treasury Department and ExxonMobil locked horns in a legal battle Thursday, with the oil giant filing a lawsuit to stop a $2 million fine the department slapped on it earlier in the day it for violating sanctions against Russia in 2014, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was head of the company.
Exxon named Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in the complaint it filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, putting the Trump administration in the awkward position of defending one Cabinet member against a lawsuit filed by a company formerly headed by another Cabinet member.
The fine is a pittance for ExxonMobil, which reported $4 billion in earnings for the first quarter of this year, but it illustrates how the company's myriad business operations could complicate the job of the nation's top diplomat.
Tillerson has long spoken against the sanctions on Russia, arguing at an Exxon shareholder meeting the same month as the alleged violations that “we don’t find them to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensively, and that’s a very hard thing to do.”
Just last month, he argued against toughening sanctions on Russia.
The heart of the dispute are eight contracts Exxon representatives signed with Igor Sechin, head of Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft. Sechin is a close confidant of Russia President Vladimir Putin and is also named in the sanctions.
Exxon said the administration, in its previous explanation of the sanctions policy, made a distinction between actions taken by Sechin in his personal capacity, which were not permitted, as opposed to his professional capacity at Rosneft.
By VICTORIA GUIDA and BEN LEFEBVRE 07/20/2017 10:35 AM EDT Updated 07/20/2017 04:32 PM EDT