Caribbean Cruz

Senator Ted Cruz returned to Texas claiming triumph after leading the ill-fated government shutdown in October, but his growing national profile is attracting scrutiny of his record. A TIME review of Cruz’s financial disclosures shows he may have violated Senate ethics rules during the 2012 campaign by failing to report money owed to him by a British Virgin Islands company.

In 1998, Cruz invested $6,000 in a Jamaican private-equity firm he founded with his Princeton roommate, David Panton. When Cruz cashed out in 2003, Panton gave him $25,000 in cash and a $75,000 promissory note against Panton’s holding company. Federal election rules required Cruz to disclose the note. Failing to do so until after his election “was an omission that was inadvertent,” Cruz told TIME.

Cruz has since revised his disclosure three times, first on his own initiative and then after inquiries by Senate ethics staffers and TIME. Cruz says he deferred and then paid taxes on the $25,000 in cash and that beyond the IOU, which has been gaining unspecified interest, he has no financial relationship with the company.

–MASSIMO CALABRESI