Nominee for Energy Secretary Lists Assets and Affiliations

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee for energy secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, is a consultant to the energy giant BP and a member of the advisory council and board of trustees of King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, among other positions, according to disclosure statements filed with the government and released on Friday.

Ernest J. Moniz

Dr. Moniz, who was under secretary of energy during the Clinton administration and is an advocate of natural gas and nuclear power as cleaner alternatives to coal, is also a director of ICF International, a prominent energy and policy consulting firm. He owns common and restricted stock worth $200,000 to $500,000 in that company, according to the statement, which lists assets and describes their value in broad ranges.

In all, he holds assets worth $4.6 million to $17.9 million.

He is also a consultant to General Electric and IHS CERA, the consulting firm formerly known as Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and a director at American Science and Engineering of Billerica, Mass., a company that does security work, including cargo screening.

Dr. Moniz, a physicist, is a professor at M.I.T. and director of that institution’s Energy Initiative, an industry-financed group that does research on energy technologies and climate change.

Dr. Moniz told the ethics officer of the Energy Department, in a letter made public by the Office of Government Ethics on Friday, that he would resign from all of those positions upon his confirmation as energy secretary by the Senate.

He also said he would follow government rules requiring him to not participate in decisions affecting those entities. He plans to sell his ICF shares within 90 days of his confirmation. Dr. Moniz has already been criticized for failing to disclose his ties to ICF and other firms in a study produced by his program at M.I.T., on the future of natural gas.

U.S. Treasury Secretary and Chinese President Meet

Mr. Lew, 57, a master of the intricacies of the United States budget who has less foreign experience than his predecessors, raised the topic of cybersecurity, a significant issue in the relationship between Washington and Beijing, American officials said. He also talked about North Korea’s nuclear program, a topic not normally on a Treasury secretary’s agenda, they said.

Mr. Xi noted that while the United States and China had “enormous shared interests, of course, unavoidably we have some differences.”

It has been unusual for Chinese leaders to draw attention to stark divisions with the United States. Mr. Xi’s choice of words showed confidence that he could manage the problems, and hinted at a lowering of expectations about developing a strategic relationship with the United States, an idea that had been proffered in the past, diplomats here said.

Contacts between Washington and Beijing have been sparse during China’s protracted political transition over the past three months. It began in November when Mr. Xi took over as head of the Communist Party, and ended last week with his ascension to the presidency at the annual session of the National People’s Congress.

For reasons of protocol, President Obama did not speak with Mr. Xi until last week, when he called the new Chinese president to congratulate him and to outline the issues at hand, including North Korea and cybersecurity.

The White House has directly accused China of widespread theft of data from American computer networks, including those of American businesses involved in the Chinese market. China’s cyberespionage against American commercial interests has attracted strong attention in Congress that could have negative consequences for China, analysts said.

“If we don’t see progress, that could increase the prospects for a political backlash that would lead to greater scrutiny of Chinese investment in the United States,” said Myron A. Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

On North Korea, the Obama administration wants to know whether Beijing will enforce the new sanctions that the United Nations Security Council imposed on the North, with China voting in favor. The administration has also announced an expansion of missile defense capabilities in an effort to deter North Korea, a message that implied that China should restrain its nuclear-armed ally or face an expanding American military focus on Asia.

Mr. Xi appeared to have gone out of his way to meet Mr. Lew before leaving Friday for his first foreign trip as president, which is to include two days in Moscow, followed by a three-nation tour of Africa. Mr. Lew is the first foreign official Mr. Xi has met as president, and Mr. Xi endowed some meaning to his phrase to Mr. Lew that he attached “great importance” to the relationship between China and the United States.

At the same time, however, Chinese commentators have noted that Secretary of State John Kerry chose to make his first trip abroad an extended journey to Europe and the Middle East, unlike his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who visited Asian nations first, including China. Mr. Kerry is expected to be in China next month as part of an Asian tour, administration officials said.

This trip is Mr. Lew’s first to China, according to administration officials. The previous two Treasury secretaries, Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Timothy F. Geithner, were experts on China, and for the past seven years they played dominant roles in the relationship between the countries.

Mr. Lew arrived in Beijing on Tuesday morning and went almost immediately to the Great Hall of the People. He was accompanied by Lael Brainard, under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, and Evan Medeiros, a senior official of the National Security Council who specializes in China.

As Mr. Lew and Mr. Xi sat side by side in large, white-upholstered armchairs, Mr. Lew stressed in brief comments overheard by reporters that the United States had seen 14 quarters of economic growth, that the housing market was “coming back,” and that a “revolution” was under way in the energy sector, a reference to shale gas production. After that, reporters were ushered out.

The meeting lasted about 45 minutes, according to Mr. Lew’s aides. The secretary stressed the need for a relationship marked by “healthy competition rather than strategic rivalry,” a Treasury Department statement said.

Later, Mr. Lew met with Xu Shaoshi, the new chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the powerful agency that manages the domestic economy. He was scheduled to have dinner with the new finance minister, Lou Jiwei, and Wednesday he is to meet with China’s new prime minister, Li Keqiang.

For his first lunch in China, Mr. Lew repaired to the Bao Yuan Dumpling House, an informal restaurant with laminated tabletops close to the United States Embassy.

There, with two staff members, he ate a variety of house specialties, using chopsticks. The bill: 109 renminbi, or roughly $6 a person.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a senior official of the National Security Council. He is Evan Medeiros, not Madeiros.

DealBook: Citigroup Secretary Accused of Embezzling From Boss

Arthur Brower/The New York TimesWilliam Salomon before the quote board at Salomon Brothers & Hutzler in 1968.

At 98, a venerable banker still goes to the office, even after the name of the storied investment firm he once ran has faded from Wall Street.

William R. Salomon uses space and a secretary paid for by Citigroup, which swallowed his firm, Salomon Brothers, in a merger. It is the least that the banking giant can do for the son of one of three brothers who started the firm a century ago.

But federal prosecutors say that Mr. Salomon’s longtime secretary did him no favors. Karen R. Febles, his former assistant at Citigroup for over a decade, has been charged with stealing nearly $2 million from him, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case.

Court papers filed by the government in February accused Ms. Febles of defrauding a retired bank executive but kept the name of the bank and the executive confidential. The victim is Mr. Salomon, according to this person, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

A Citigroup spokesman, Mark Costiglio, said the bank “informed law enforcement immediately upon discovery of suspicious account activity by this former employee, and we have cooperated fully to ensure that justice is done.”

Matthew Reilly, a spokesman for the United States attorney in New Jersey, whose office brought the case, declined to comment.

Ms. Febles, 47, of Palisades Park, N.J., has pleaded not guilty and is set to stand trial in Federal District Court in Newark on Nov. 13.

Her lawyer, Edward J. McQuat, said that she “was not responsible for the government’s allegations and we hope to convince a jury of that.”

Ms. Febles is hardly the first executive assistant accused of fleecing a corporate boss, a crime that investigations and securities firms say happens with some frequency. One of the more memorable incidents happened in 2002, when a secretary who worked for E. Scott Mead, a top banker at Goldman Sachs in London, was imprisoned after looting more than $5 million by wiring blocks of his money to bank accounts in Cyprus.

Experts say that these incidents arise for several reasons. Investment bankers and corporate lawyers are often on the road, working 60 to 80 hours a week, and they give secretaries a lot of discretion. They also say that class envy often factors into these crimes. And in cases like the one involving Mr. Salomon, elder abuse can play a role.

Bill Cunningham/The New York TimesWilliam Salomon, right, the founder of Salomon Brothers, the New York investment banking firm, with his wife, Virginia in 2005.

“People put an excessive amount of trust in individuals who have fiduciary duty and signing power over their accounts,” said Daniel E. Karson, chairman of Kroll Advisory Solutions, a corporate investigations firm. “And part of what goes into the larcenous thinking is that this is a wealthy person who isn’t counting their nickels and dimes and will never miss the money.”

Prosecutors say that Ms. Febles worked for Mr. Salomon from 2000 until September 2011, answering his phones, scheduling his appointments and paying his bills. Mr. Salomon authorized Ms. Febles to prepare personal checks that he would sign. After he signed the checks, many of which were made out to “cash” or “petty cash,” Ms. Febles would alter the withdrawal amount and deposit excess funds in her own bank account, according to the government’s complaint.

In 2010, for example, Mr. Salomon’s expenses, paid in cash, totaled about $450,000, but checks in excess of $1.1 million were issued that year from his bank accounts, the complaint said. Prosecutors say that Ms. Febles was the only other person given access to his accounts.

The money, totaling $1.8 million, is said to have been stolen in small increments over a period of years. In one instance, prosecutors say, Ms. Febles made out a check for “nine hundred” dollars, but when the check was negotiated, the words “nine thousand” were added before the words “nine hundred.”

Ms. Febles lived more like a Wall Street banker than a secretary who earned no more than $93,000 a year, according to court filings. Last year she paid more than $50,000 cash for a Range Rover and about $35,000 for a Mercedes-Benz. Recent cruise vacations cost her $45,000. She paid for such extravagances, the government says, by skimming from Mr. Salomon’s fortune.

Born and raised in New York City, Mr. Salomon, who is known as Billy, skipped college and joined his father’s firm at 19. While serving as senior managing partner for 15 years during the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Salomon orchestrated the firm’s transformation from a small bond-trading house to one of the country’s largest and most profitable investment banks.

“Pleasant, well-tailored and casual, it would be easy to think of him as another example of Wall Street nepotism,” wrote The New York Times of Mr. Salomon in a 1965 profile. “Colleagues and competitors dispel that notion.”

Among Mr. Salomon’s protégés was an ambitious young trader named Michael R. Bloomberg. Another was John H. Gutfreund, who succeeded him in 1978 as head of the firm. The newly minted chief executive of Citigroup, Michael L. Corbat, also began his career at Salomon.

Mr. Gutfreund presided over Salomon during a tumultuous period that ended in a scandal, drawing charges that the firm rigged the Treasury bond market. Salomon’s brash, risk-taking culture under Mr. Gutfreund was chronicled in “Liar’s Poker,” a tell-all memoir by Michael Lewis, who worked as a bond salesman at Salomon before he became a writer.

In a 1991 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Salomon, embittered after a falling out with Mr. Gutfreund, lamented that the firm had lost its way.

“In my time, the customer was God and we would no more take advantage of him than we’d fly out the window,” Mr. Salomon said. “We wanted to maintain a high ethical standard.”

Salomon became swept up in the financial services mega-mergers of the late 1990s. The insurer Travelers acquired the firm in 1998 and later that year combined with Citicorp, which would become Citigroup.

Through it all, Citigroup provided Mr. Salomon with a Midtown Manhattan office and a secretary. A fixture of the Upper East Side old-money crowd, Mr. Salomon lives in a Park Avenue apartment and has an oceanfront home in Southampton on Long Island. He was widowed in 2008 when his wife of more than 70 years, Virginia Foster Salomon, died. It was around that time, the government says, that Ms. Febles started embezzling from him.

Mr. Salomon, who, despite his advanced age is said to have all of his mental faculties, did not return multiple calls seeking comment. Another assistant now answers his phone.