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No criminal charges in rare alcohol investigation at Oregon Alcohol Bureau, state report says
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Criminal charges are not warranted in the rare liquor investigation that rocked Oregon’s alcohol agency last year and strained its executive director resignstate justice officials said Monday.
In February 2023, the Oregon Department of Justice began to investigate whether employees of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission misused their positions to obtain bottles of premium bourbon for personal use. The department reviewed thousands of documents and emails and interviewed dozens of people, including current and former commission employees and liquor store agents. It concluded that it did not have sufficient evidence to prove the criminal offenses it had considered – official misconduct and misuse of confidential information – beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a report released Monday, the department said that “even though the employees’ behavior may have violated ethical standards, there is no explicit policy prohibiting the specific conduct, we found no evidence of relevant training, and the practice appears to have been long-standing and endorsed by at least one executive director.”
The findings were announced in a press release from Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who described the investigation as thorough and said it was “critical that Oregonians trust our state agencies, their leaders and employees.”
Law enforcement officials launched the investigation last year after media outlets obtained public records requests an internal investigation by the agency that concluded that its then-Executive Director Steve Marks and five other agency employees diverted highly sought-after bourbons, including Pappy Van Winkle’s 23-year-old whiskey, for personal use.
Officials paid for the whiskey, which can cost thousands of dollars a bottle, but they used their knowledge and contacts at the commission to obtain it and consequently deprived the public of expensive drinksaid the internal investigation.
Officials allegedly had very limited bottles of premium bourbon routed to a liquor store, often in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, where the commission’s headquarters are located, and reserved them for pickup later. They said they used the whiskey for personal consumption or as a gift.
In his responses to the internal investigator’s questions, Marks denied violating Oregon ethics laws and state policy. However, he acknowledged that he received preferential treatment “to some extent” in obtaining the whiskey as a commissioned employee. Marks and other employees said they never resold the whiskeys they obtained.
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In its investigation, the commission found that the routing of high-quality whiskey to state agency leaders violated Oregon statutes, including one that prohibits public officials from using confidential information for personal gain. The subsequent state justice department investigation, however, concluded that this crime was not justified, “because the non-public information that officials relied on – that a bottle of rare alcoholic beverage was available – did not affect the bottle itself ”, increasing its value.
Justice officials said criminal charges of official misconduct were also not warranted because they would require proof that officials knew their actions were unauthorized and there are no statutes that explicitly prohibit the conduct seen in the case.
Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek thanked law enforcement officials who worked on the investigation. She had called for the investigation and called for Marks’ resignation.
“Although the investigation found that the revised conduct did not meet the necessary burden for criminal prosecution, documents and reports resulting from the extensive criminal investigation will be available to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for consideration in its pending review of related ethics complaints this issue,” Kotek said in a statement.
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission, charged with enforcing government ethics laws, is conducting a separate and ongoing civil investigation into the matter.