We completed an investigation into allegations that an Office of the Special Trustee (OST) employee may have violated ethics regulations by using information he obtained through his official position to gain an unfair advantage in negotiating the sale of two tracts of land through the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.
We found that the OST employee violated Federal ethics regulations by using nonpublic information to further his own private interest or that of another. The OST employee admitted that the nonpublic information he used in an attempt to sell two tracts of family land was obtained through his position with OST. He also admitted to lying about this knowledge during his interviews with an ethics counselor.
We did not find evidence that the OST employee committed any criminal ethics violations. Neither he nor his family benefited financially from the information because the two tracts of land in question were never sold, and we found no evidence the employee participated personally and substantially in OST matters that would affect his own financial interests or that he acted as an agent or attorney for anyone else before the Government.