Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz potentially violated ethics rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, a review of financial disclosure and company documents by TIME shows. The relationship originated with a $6,000 investment Cruz made more than a decade ago in a Jamaican private equity firm founded by his college roommate. When Cruz later reported the financial relationship in 2013, he failed to comply with Senate rules requiring full identification of the holding company and its location, triggering an inquiry by Senate Select Committee on Ethics staff and a second amended disclosure. After additional inquiries by TIME this week, Cruz said he is now in the process making further corrections to his disclosure. Cruz told TIME Thursday that the initial failure to report the financial relationship was an oversight that he corrected last May on his own initiative in his first filing after his election to the Senate. “It was an omission that was inadvertent,” Cruz said. He said the later amendment to the May filing was part of the normal interaction with Senate ethics committee staffers. “There is a routine back and forth with the staff with whom you file the report where they make inquiries,” Cruz says. He provided TIME with copies of a number of relevant documents supporting his explanation of the incorrect disclosures. The legally required disclosures arise from an apparently dormant business relationship, according to documents reviewed by TIME. When his wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, served in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department in 2003, Ted Cruz went to considerable lengths to disclose his positions to the government, and to divest himself of his Caribbean holdings. But there was one exception. (MORE: Democrats’ Biggest 2014 Weapon: Ted Cruz) In an amended financial disclosure form filed Oct. 1, Cruz said he still holds a promissory note from a Kingston-based company called Caribbean Equity Partners Investment Holdings LTD, worth between $100,000 and $250,000. No company with that name is registered in Jamaica. There is however a dormant … Continue reading Ted Cruz Failed To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company