A US document revealed on Wednesday showed that the State Department is searching for a bottle of whiskey that the Japanese government gave to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
According to the document, the price of the bottle is 5 thousand and 800 dollars.
A notice to the Office of the Chief of Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - dated July 22 last - stated that the government of Japan gifted Pompeo with whiskey on June 24, 2019.
The notice includes gifts to US federal employees from foreign governments in 2019.
In the notice to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, the gift was listed as "its fate unknown."
"The ministry is investigating the matter and has opened an investigation," it said in the margin of the document.
The New York Times was the first to report the investigation, noting that US officials are allowed to keep gifts under $390 only.
Minister's reply
Pompeo's attorney, William Burke, said the former secretary "has no recollection of obtaining the whiskey bottle and has no knowledge of what happened to it. He also does not know of any investigation into her whereabouts. He has no idea what happened to that bottle of whiskey."
The New York Times quoted two unnamed people familiar with the matter, saying that the US government never paid for the bottle and that the State Department asked its inspector general to determine what happened to it.
The newspaper report said that it was not yet clear whether Pompeo had received the gift in the first place, as he was heading to Saudi Arabia on June 24, 2019, when Japanese officials presented it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In April, a government watchdog accused Pompeo of violating federal ethical rules governing the use of taxpayer-funded resources when he and his wife asked State Department employees to perform personal tasks more than 100 times.
Pompeo denied the report, saying it was politically motivated and full of fallacies.
It is noteworthy that Pompeo was Secretary of State in the administration of former President Donald Trump.
Pompeo is seen as among the few Republicans with presidential ambitions in the 2024 election, though he has not confirmed this.