The Interior Department’s inspector general concluded that the Bureau of Land Management’s second-in-command violated ethics rules in failing to disclose a financial investment in Berkshire Hathaway for about a month in 2021.
Nada Wolff Culver, BLM’s principal deputy director, sold stock in the company that year, after notifying the Interior Department ethics’ office about the holdings.
Investigators found Culver did not violate criminal conflict of interests laws with her husband’s financial investment in ConocoPhillips, according to the inspector general’s report issued Tuesday that documents its more than yearlong inquiry prompted last year by an outside watchdog group. BLM last year approved ConocoPhillips’ controversial Willow oil project in Alaska.
The inspector general’s office reported that Culver “initially failed to identify her holdings of Berkshire Hathaway stock” after the agency’s ethic’s department emailed her a “List of Prohibited Investments” for senior Interior officials, and asked her to identify whether she had any financial ties to any of the companies.
