WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., has come under fire in recent weeks for allegedly directing federal money to friends and business associates in the northern part of the state.

Now it appears as though a Mollohan relative also received federal contracts worth millions.

Mollohan's third cousin, Joe Jarvis, was involved in real estate for years. But in 1995, Jarvis made a slight career change, opening a company with his wife, Rosemary, called Arrey Industries. The company received three federal contracts or subcontracts between 1995 and 2000 from the U. S. Department of Energy.

Now, some people, including the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, are asking how Jarvis' company received those contracts in the first place.

"The real question is how he ended up being a government contractor," said the watchdog group's chairman Ken Boehm, who spent nine months looking into Mollohan's finances after noticing a rapid increase in the congressman's personal wealth.

"In 1995, (Jarvis) got a subcontract that originated in Congressman Mollohan's district from the Department of Energy facility in Morgantown."

Jarvis did not return several calls left at his home in Washington, D.C.

Information from the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office shows the Jarvises incorporated Arrey in September 1995. The incorporation papers listed the business' purposes as doing research and development of computer software technologies and related computer services. Rosemary Jarvis was named the company's president, vice president and treasurer.

Like her husband, Rosemary Jarvis has a background in real estate.

Arrey Industries' first Energy Department contract was to help the federal government evaluate the impact of decontaminating and decommissioning nuclear plants. The company received two more contracts -- in 1996 and 1998 -- to continue their work.

In 1997, the Federal Energy Technology Center posted on its Web site a data sheet about a Arrey Industries project. The project, known as the Phoenix project, was supposed to provide a "well-organized, accessible and extensive database of decommissioning and decontamination related information." Arrey was listed as the prime contractor with two subcontractors also working on the project -- MRJ Inc., a defense contractor with experience in software development, and NEXI Inc., a company with experience in decommissioning nuclear plants in Europe, according to the data sheet.

Arrey said it would fulfill its contract by distributing CD-ROMs containing "a graphical user interface" to access, browse, query and analyze algorithms and databases.

"The idea is to provide useful information quickly and easily to improve the efficiency and safety of the (decontamination and decommissioning) activity," Arrey said on the data sheet.

Boehm said Arrey's Phoenix project, as well as the company itself, raises questions. He said there is no paper trail to show why Arrey Industries received the contracts it did, what exactly it produced and what gave the company the expertise to do the work in the first place.

He said the timing also is questionable.

One year after Arrey Industries received its first federal contract, the Jarvises, Mollohan and the congressman's wife, Barbara, began buying condominiums in The Remington building in Washington, D.C.

The initial 17 condominiums cost about $85,000 each. The two couples gradually purchased more units as property values increased. They now own 27 units worth between $300,000 and $350,000 each.

"(Joe Jarvis) put he was in real estate, which in fact, he was. Then he gets a highly technical subcontract from the Department of Energy facility in the congressman's district. And he gets it during the same two- to three-year period when he's entering into a business relationship with the congressman," Boehm said.

Arrey Industries used to have an office in the Alan B. Mollohan Innovation Center at the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation. But the company was dissolved in 2005, and a different business now occupies the office.

Mollohan said the federal subcontracts and the purchase of the condos had nothing to do with each other.

"I do know he had a company, and I do know he had a federal contract. But we don't have responsibility for that whatsoever," Mollohan said.

He said the two couples decided to invest in The Remington because of long-time interests in real estate by both couples. He said he and his wife began investing in property shortly after they got married. They bought townhouses they both lived in and rented out, as well as homes and apartments.

"It's just something my family does. My dad had The Ramada in Morgantown. So it was pretty natural," he said.

Mollohan said questions about the rapid rise in his personal wealth are simple to explain and simple to understand. He said the real estate market was relatively depressed in the mid 1990s when the Mollohans and Jarvises first invested in the condos.

Then it rebounded -- quickly.

"Anybody who lives in this area, unless they're living under a rock, or anybody who really lives anywhere, appreciates the fact that real estate's gone up dramatically, particularly in Washington, particularly in that area," Mollohan said, adding, "This really is not that complicated."

The congressman said the hubbub about his finances, his real estate holdings and his cousin's federal contracts are the result of political retribution.

"I think the motives that are behind it are very apparent. They are political," he said.