Six top managers with Oregon's liquor agency will not face charges for using their insider knowledge to obtain hard-to-find bottles of liquor.
Courtney Sherwood / OPB
Top managers at the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission who used their inside knowledge to buy hard-to-find whiskeys won’t face criminal charges, the state Department of Justice said Monday.
After a 15-month investigation that spanned dozens of interviews and tens of thousands of written records, investigators couldn’t find enough definitive proof of the questionable transactions to file charges, according to an 11-page summary released by the DOJ.
Even if they had, the summary suggests investigators might have struggled to prove that the employees made the purchases even though they knew it wasn’t allowed, which would be required to obtain a conviction for the charge of official misconduct.
“In light of our responsibility to prove each element of a criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt and the sufficiency of the evidence currently available to us,” the report says, “we have determined that criminal charges are not warranted.”
The decision closes one chapter of a scandal that rocked the OLCC early last year. That’s when it emerged the agency had looked into six top officials for steering highly sought bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle and Elmer T. Lee to themselves for purchase. Those liquors, available seasonally or in low numbers from distilleries, are sometimes only available to winners of special OLCC lottery drawings that offer the right to purchase them.
OLCC first reprimanded the employees for directing bottles to themselves, a practice it found was out of line with government ethics law and state policy. But amid public outcry, Gov. Tina Kotek demanded that five of the people implicated in the activity be fired. She had already asked then-OLCC Director Steve Marks, who admitted purchasing rare bottles, to resign for unrelated reasons.
Kotek also asked for the resignation of the liquor commission’s chair and called on the DOJ to investigate.
Although the six OLCC managers acknowledged their actions during the agency’s internal interview, the DOJ said it couldn’t use those statements as part of a potential criminal case.
“We recognized that when a state employee is required to make a statement under the threat of job forfeiture that statement may be subject to suppression as a coerced admission,” the summary report said.
Asked for interviews as part of the criminal investigation, all six of the managers facing scrutiny declined.
But in trying to prove the liquor diversions via interviews and records, the DOJ was unsuccessful. While OLCC employees told investigators that such liquor diversions were part of longstanding practice, none offered specific details about employees who’d benefited, the report said.
And when the DOJ got bank records of OLCC employees, it was unable to definitively tie any one transaction to the purchase of a rare bottle of liquor.
The report shows that investigators looked at, and ultimately ruled out, three potential misdemeanor charges: official misconduct in the first degree, official misconduct in the second degree, and misuse of confidential information.
With the criminal investigation over, an investigation into the liquor diversions by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission can proceed. The commission had paused its inquiry until the DOJ finished its work.