Ex-Im Says They Took Down All Their Public Data Just to Reformat It, But the Reformated Data Is Still Missing Crucial Info

On Sunday, Kevin Cirilli had a piece at the Hill about the data that the Ex-Im Bank removed from Data.gov. If you recall, some of the data was restored to the federal site after many people started asking about it. but as I’ve noted, the dataset that is now available omits three critical fields that were available in the original dataset: the Primary Buyer, the Primary Source of Repayment, and the Primary Supplier.

Cirilli did his homework and asked the Bank to explain the discrepancies between the new and old datasets. Unfortunately, the Hill piece only reports on the bank’s version of events, implying that only denied applications are missing from the dataset. Here’s what the bank had to say:

Between January 29 and February 13, officials at the bank removed disclosures listing businesses that applied for financing at the bank but were denied, a source at the bank told The Hill.

“During a regular quarterly review, it was decided to reformat the way data is presented,” the source said. Under the changes, bank officials are no longer disclosing denied applicants.

Well, at least we now know who pulled down the datasets! It is nice to see that Ex-Im is claiming responsibility for it, rather than blaming it on some glitch.

But we still have a serious gap in the new data: It’s important to know about failed applications, and we’re missing key data fields for accepted applications. Even pro-Ex-Im advocates like Representative Stephen Fincher, author of a “reform” bill that would mostly duplicate past failed reform efforts, is quoted in the article complaining about these problems. He said:

 “Transparency at the Export Import Bank has long been a concern and must be addressed,” Fincher told The Hill when asked to comment on bank officials removing the denied loan applications.

And to add insult to injury, the bank’s explanation about this data kerfuffle doesn’t quite make sense. The main dataset first went missing in the summer of 2014. I complained about it several times in my blog posts during that time. To be sure, extra files were scrubbed from Data.gov later on, and it is possible that these were removed between January 29 and February 13, as they told the Hill. Either way, the bank’s statement here is very misleading.

More importantly, the bank completely ignored the biggest transparency problem with their new dataset. The denied applications aren’t the only data missing: Three critical fields that provide information to the public about the foreign parties to each Ex-Im deal have completely vanished from the new dataset without any explanation.

It’s pretty easy to check whether the Bank’s statement that they merely “reformatted the way the data is presented” is correct. We can compare the old and the new dataset to look for specific deals and see how they are formatted.

I picked three Ex-Im transactions and compared the information I found for each deal in each dataset. Here is what I found:

The three transactions I chose are:

1. Transaction ID # 07086750XX0001 in FY 2014, a $281 million loan to Roy Hill in Australia (which happens to be owned by that country’s richest woman) to purchase Caterpillar equipment (a gigantic company which happens to be one of Ex-Im’s favorite customers)
2. Transaction ID # 08087436XA0001 in FY 2013, a $148.5 million loan guarantee to the state-owned Emirates Airline to purchase Boeing jets
3. Transaction ID # 07085466XX0001 in FY 2012, a $3.5 billion loan (the largest ever reported in Ex-Im records) Saudi Arabian company Sadahara Chemical Company purchase boilers from “Various US Companies.” (Real transparent.)

In the new dataset, for the Australia deal, you can’t see the supplier (International Trade & Transporation Inc), the buyer (Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd. – that’s Australis’s richest woman’s company), or the source of repayment (also Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd). The borrower for this transaction happens to be Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd., but there’s no way you could know that just by looking at the new dataset.

For the Boeing/Emirates deal, you can’t see the supplier (“Various US Small Businesses” – real helpful) or the buyer (Spv/Emirates Airline) or repayer (Spv/Emirates Airline). Again, the borrower in this transaction happens to be the same as the buyer and repayer, but you couldn’t tell without already knowing this.

For the Saudi Arabia deal, you can’t see the supplier (“Various US Companies” – gee, thanks) or the buyer (“Unknown” – great) or the source of repayment (Sadara Chemical Company). Sadara Chemical Company is listed as the borrower, again, but the data doesn’t tell you that.

This dataset comparison clearly shows that the columns are not merely rearranged or “reformatted” as the bank’s press person claims in the Hill article – they are outright missing.

Ex-Im claims to be dedicated to transparency and open governance. Even if the datasets were removed for review, you would expect bank officials to take extra care to provide a high-quality, complete dataset to concerned citizens eventually. When questioned about missing variables, you would expect them to look at the dataset and actually verify that they are all present before boasting about transparency to the press. Ex-Im officials have a bit more explaining to do.