Millions undisclosed by TX congressman

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on a U.S. House ethics subcommittee, is admitting his accounting firm made “clerical errors” worth millions, thus failing to fully disclose his finances.

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, detailed missing information about dozens of stock transactions made by McCaul’s wife. McCaul has said a spreadsheet his accountants, Millan & Company, prepared actually cut off stocks that began with the letter “E,” all the way to the letter “Z.” The full electronic statement was actually disclosed to the ethics subcommittee prior to the firm's printing.

The firm released a statement, saying the error was “inadvertent and unintentional.”

The ethics subcommittee on which McCaul serves is currently preparing for a trial on the possible disclosure problems of Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York.

According to Roll Call, McCaul is the sixth richest member of Congress, with a minimum net worth of nearly $74 million. The publication said that amount is six times his reported worth in 2004.

McCaul also issued this statement this week regarding his disclosure matters:

In response to recent media reports concerning my Personal Financial Disclosure reports (PFD or report), my staff and I confirmed with the Ethics Committee that a 100% complete, electronic copy of my 2009 report was transmitted to the Committee for pre-filing screening. After adopting the committee’s guidance, my accountant, Millan & Company printed the PFD to file a hard copy version with the Clerk of the House, in which two pages, out of over 120, were inadvertently cut off by a printing error. For anyone to say there was under-disclosure to the Ethics Committee is simply false and misleading. The Committee has the full and complete report in the electronically pre-filed version.

My 2008 financial disclosure was 100% accurate and complete as to the detailed ownership of stock sold by my spouse and children, as well as the amount of income these transactions generated. In fact, I voluntarily over-disclose this detailed ownership information which is not required under the disclosure rules, but I provide it in order go above and beyond the rules and be completely open.

In disclosing the aggregated dollar amount of these transactions in the transaction section of my 2008 report, Millan & Company made a clerical error and placed one X in the wrong column, literally out of hundreds of columns in my report, assigning an incorrect aggregated value to the transactions. Significantly, the income from these transactions is 100% disclosed in the income section of this report.