Firm’s Honorariums Get Congress’ Attention : Congress: An export and leasing company ranks tops in speaking fees. Last year lawmakers got about $100,000 to visit its N.J. headquarters.

Grover Connell has no Washington office, no full-time lobbyist and no political action committee. He doesn’t hold fund-raisers for candidates and doesn’t like to schmooze at political events. But the New Jersey businessman, who runs a $1-billion export and leasing company, still has been able to make friends in Washington.

At least once a week, Connell invites a member of Congress to his company’s headquarters in Westfield, meeting the guest with a limousine at Newark Airport, 20 minutes away. Over a buffet lunch, the lawmaker gives company executives an overview of what Congress is doing and answers questions, then takes home a $2,000 speaking fee. Last year, the Connell Co. gave more honorariums to members of Congress than any other company in the nation--about $100,000 worth.

Occasionally, Connell invites his congressional speaker and spouse to spend a weekend in nearby New York City at his firm’s expense. They stay at a top hotel such as the Plaza or the Helmsley Palace, and Connell takes them to dinner, too. “We get to spend more time with them, get to know them better,” said Connell, who is nearly 72, but looks years younger. “We think it’s worthwhile, and it’s within the House rules.”

What does he get for his money? According to Connell, he gets information essential to his business interests, such as how a planned investment might be affected by changes in a government program. He gets access to members of Congress when he needs it. And he has the ability to call on members to attend a reception for the head of a foreign country where he does business.

“If we spend $100,000 a year on honoraria, that’s nothing compared with the cost of having a Washington office or hiring a lobbyist. And we think we do better,” Connell said.

Connell said he cannot understand why more of corporate America doesn’t do the same. “The government is an enormous player in its effect on our business,” Connell said in an interview at his office. “We think it’s worthwhile to know which directions we are headed in.”

Connell’s net worth has been estimated at $350 million, and his company is one of the larger private firms in the nation, but little is known about either.

The firm has sold rice and sugar for years, and since the 1970s has diversified into such areas as importing processed foods from the Orient, arranging leasing deals for railroads, airlines and utilities, and building commercial developments.

A company booklet notes that its sales are more than $1 billion a year and includes pictures of many of its products and projects, but not of its chief executive. Connell said he doesn’t seek publicity. And his style belies his wealth. For instance, he shares his office with his son, Ted, and another executive.

But Connell isn’t shy about his political giving. He and his wife, Pat, each make the maximum $25,000 a year in personal political donations to federal campaigns, he said. He also gave $200,000 in corporate funds--over a four-year period--to help build a media center for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when it was headed by his friend, then-Rep. Tony Coelho of California.

Connell said he doesn’t ask his speakers for special legislative favors. It’s enough, he said, to get a sense of “the current direction of the country” in the agricultural, trade and tax policy fields that affect his company. And he gets it delivered in person, “with all the nuances,” he said. “We think this gives us a perspective others don’t have.”

At times, Connell has used his extensive contacts on Capitol Hill in ways that bolster his business interests. He was especially close to the late Rep. Otto Passman (D-La.), for years the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the foreign aid budget. In the 1970s, Passman pressured foreign governments on Connell’s behalf. More recently, Connell has invited members of Congress to receptions that he has sponsored for the controversial president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.

U.S. foreign aid to Zaire, which has rich mineral resources but one of the smallest per capita incomes in the world, has been limited because of congressional concerns about human rights abuses and corruption. For instance, Rep. Howard Wolpe (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, said at a hearing last year he had seen evidence “that literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars have vanished into the hands of the president (Mobutu) and his collaborators.”

Connell’s firm has sold rice to Zaire for many years and a few years ago solicited a contract to supply equipment for Zaire’s state-run mining company, Gecamines. “I consider Mobutu a personal friend and I admire a lot of what he’s done,” Connell said. “He created a nation. . . . I don’t think Zaire has a severe human rights problem. I think he’s being falsely accused. And corruption is a problem everywhere in the Third World.”

Connell said introducing members of Congress to the African leader “creates goodwill certainly” with Mobutu. But he said his motive wasn’t to help cement his business ties. “We were trying to do something that would give members of Congress a better understanding of what he (Mobutu) was actually like.”

“I went because Grover asked me,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento) in a comment echoed by other lawmakers who attended the receptions. “I didn’t go to meet the prime minister or president of Zaire. I didn’t even know who he was.”

Connell said he became active in Washington in the early 1970s. His firm was named Connell Rice & Sugar Co. at the time, and it dominated the government-supported Food for Peace market in rice. His first donations and speech payments were directed mostly to members from the rice-growing districts of California, Arkansas and Louisiana. One of his early honorarium payments, for example, was $1,000 to Passman for a July 24, 1975, visit to Westfield.

Connell’s relationship with Passman was laid out in a House investigation of South Korean influence-buying in Congress in the late 1970s.

The final report said Passman pressed Connell’s business interests in several countries. Passman, who was defeated in 1976 and acquitted of criminal charges in the scandal, told a federal investigator that he forced the Koreans to hire a Connell shipping company by threatening to cut off foreign aid if they refused.

Connell said he has never been as close to a member of Congress as he was to Passman. “He was the most unique personality I ever met in my life and eccentric to the extreme. . . . He did speak for us. There’s no question about that.”

Connell’s sales of rice to South Korea provided millions of dollars in commissions for Korean agent Tongsun Park, who gave some of the money back to members of Congress, including Passman, in cash.

Connell was indicted on fraud, racketeering and perjury charges alleging that he agreed to pay Park $600,000 in commissions and then covered up the secret agreement by sending the payments to the offshore bank account of a Korean company. Connell denied that he knew the payments were going to Park.

The charges were dropped when Park, who was a key witness in the case, changed his testimony, the Justice Department said at the time. Connell said recently, as he did after the indictment, that he was unjustly accused.

In 1982, a State Department official told Congress that Connell had threatened to use his influence in Congress to cut off foreign aid to South Korea if the Koreans didn’t buy his rice. Connell says he never made any such claim.

During the last decade, world rice markets have softened and Connell has diversified his business into leasing and real estate development. He expanded his list of honorarium recipients as well.

In 1981, his firm gave out $11,000 in speaking fees to 11 members of Congress. By 1985, the amount had increased to $60,000 for 30 members. By 1987, the figure had grown to $84,000.

Two of Connell’s close friends in the House, Coelho and Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), helped Connell build up his speakers’ list by suggesting other House members as speakers, according to invitation letters that Connell sent to several members in 1985. The letters referred to the program as “The Congress” seminars and asked members to talk about “ongoing legislative activities of primary interest to us such as those affecting agriculture, foreign trade, taxes and the economy.”

The most frequent guests at the Connell honorarium program over the years have been Alexander, who represents a major rice-growing district, with at least nine visits, and Reps. Matthew J. Rinaldo (R-N.J.) and Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), with eight appearances each. Connell’s headquarters is in Rinaldo’s district, while Dixon served for years on a key appropriations panel.

Dixon said in an interview that his speeches at Connell’s company usually deal with what Congress is doing, as well as the outlook for foreign aid, because he served on that appropriations subcommittee. “A lot of members enjoy Grover’s program because he’s not lobbying you on any particular issue,” Dixon said.

In addition to the receptions that he has hosted for Mobutu, Connell recently arranged for four House members to visit Zaire. The four--Reps. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), Robert J. Mrazek (D-N.Y.), Mike Espy (D-Miss.) and Bill Lowery (R-San Diego)--have appeared at his honorarium program, and Connell also has made campaign contributions to the three Democrats.

Congress paid for the air travel to Zaire, with Mobutu’s government paying for travel and lodging within the country. The visit included a private luncheon with Mobutu aboard his riverboat. Mrazek said the congressmen raised their concerns about reports of human rights violations and corruption in the African nation. Connell, but not the U.S. ambassador, was at the luncheon, Mrazek said.

Torricelli said that Connell “offered assistance for getting access to Mobutu and the region.” He said he knew Connell had “a close personal relationship” with Mobutu but didn’t know the details. “The activities of one businessman are not my concern,” he said.

Although the House has voted to bar its members from keeping honorariums after this year, Connell said he will continue inviting members to Westfield to speak and will offer to donate the $2,000 fee to charity. “What their reaction will be, we’ll just have to wait and see,” he said.