At the center of a federal inquiry into Representative Alan B. Mollohan, Democrat of West Virginia, is his real estate investment with a bankrupt distant cousin who touted his connections to one of Mr. Mollohan’s nonprofit organizations to win work, including a federal contract in his district.

The relative, Joseph L. Jarvis Jr., faced $1 million debts in a personal bankruptcy case when he partnered with Mr. Mollohan in 1996, a few years after his aerospace company failed to fulfill its federal contracts and also filed for bankruptcy.

The 1995 West Virginia deal in Mr. Mollohan’s district eventually soured too, and Mr. Jarvis walked away owing Mr. Mollohan’s nonprofit group $67,681.63 in rent.

Still, Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Mollohan and their wives enjoyed a lucrative real estate partnership managing condominium rentals at the Remington, a 52-unit building that bills itself as "Washington’s best kept secret." The couples own 27 Remington condos, which have more than tripled in value, to $8 million, over the decade.

Mr. Mollohan stepped down last month as the top Democrat on the House ethics committee amid an F.B.I. investigation into his personal finances and his handling of special federal appropriations known as earmarks. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has subpoenaed papers from the Remington partnership.

The inquiry was prompted by a 500-page complaint from a conservative Washington group accusing Mr. Mollohan of failing to properly report the Remington investment and questioning whether his relationship with Mr. Jarvis — whose lengthy list of creditors included the congressman’s father and the federal government — was appropriate.

The Remington is one of three of Mr. Mollohan’s real estate deals under scrutiny. The others are $2 million in beach property in North Carolina that he bought with the director of another earmark-dependent nonprofit he created, and a $900,000 farm purchased with a friend whose company got several federal contracts based on his earmarks.

Mr. Mollohan refused repeated requests to discuss the Remington and Mr. Jarvis, with a spokesman saying he was still compiling "documents necessary to answer questions" about his real estate transactions. Among the issues are why Mr. Mollohan and his wife borrowed $2.3 million from a bank on the same day in 1999 that they and the Jarvises loaned the partnership the same amount — both using the condominiums as collateral — and why these loans were not listed on the congressman’s financial disclosure forms.

Mr. Jarvis and his wife, Rosemary, also declined to comment.

There is no evidence that Mr. Mollohan, first elected in 1982 and now a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, intervened to help Mr. Jarvis procure the $1 million subcontract in West Virginia from the Energy Department in 1995.

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