Rivera is the tip of the iceberg; Citgo had ‘multiple’ lobbying contracts, sources say
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s fingerprints are all over the $50 million lobbying contract that former Congressman David Rivera signed with a U.S. affiliate of the state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., said sources familiar with his 2017 consulting agreement.
Rodríguez, then Venezuela’s foreign minister, played a central role in engineering the contract with the former Miami politician, calling into question his claim that he financially assisted rogue executives with U.S.-based Citgo, a division of PDVSA, and opposition Venezuelan leaders in a plot to topple President Nicolás Maduro and his socialist regime, according to those sources.
Instead, sources said, the contract between PDVSA’s subsidiary in the United States and Rivera was part of an expensive lobbying effort launched by the Maduro government in 2017 to keep the new Trump administration from imposing more financial sanctions against the state-run oil company, Venezuelan officials and business cronies.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Rivera’s contract with the subsidiary, PDV USA, was one of three authorized by the Maduro regime to help with lobbying efforts in Washington as well as legal services.
Rodríguez “was personally involved in the communications that this needed to happen,” said a source with direct knowledge of the PDVSA subsidiary’s contract with Rivera. “I can confirm that there were multiple contracts approved,” the source added.
Rivera’s contract with PDV USA was signed by the Miami Republican and PDVSA board member Guillermo Blanco, vice president of refining. News that Rivera had agreed to lobby for and accept money from the Maduro government dismayed many people in Miami because the Cuban American had built his political career denouncing the Havana and Caracas regimes.
Last month, Rivera was sued by PDVSA’s U.S. subsidiary for breach of contract after it paid the one-term congressman $15 million in March and April of 2017. The contract, ostensibly for “strategic consulting services” to improve the state-run oil company’s reputation in the United States, was canceled because Rivera failed to provide any services other than a couple of short reports.
Rivera, who has declined to respond to recent Miami Herald requests for comment, initially said that all of his income from the consulting contract was spent on helping the opposition party’s attempts in Venezuela to overthrow Maduro’s government and on freeing imprisoned opposition political leader Leopoldo López. He was freed in July 2017 and now resides in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. Rivera also said he financially assisted the so-called Citgo 6, a group of executives who were imprisoned by Maduro’s government in late 2017, later placed under house arrest, and then sent back to prison earlier this year.
Law enforcement sources, citing corporate and personal bank records, said Rivera’s claims about how he spent his income from the Venezuelan government contract don’t square with his actions.
The Miami Herald has learned that Rivera, who has been under federal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office since the latter part of 2017, diverted about $4 million from his lobbying contract with Venezuela to a politically connected business tycoon, Raúl Gorrín, and another $3.5 million to a Miami fundraiser, Esther Nuhfer, who had worked on Rivera’s past campaigns.
Rivera also withdrew at least $150,000 from his corporate account with Chase Bank at a variety of branches in Miami-Dade County, the sources said. These withdrawals were considered suspicious by law enforcement because he made 15 of them for $10,000 each to avoid Bank Secrecy Act reporting requirements when transactions exceed that figure. In other words, he is suspected of structuring those withdrawals so they would fall under the reporting threshold, the sources said.
It is not clear how Rodríguez, one of Maduro’s most trusted aides, specifically arranged to steer the PDV USA contract to Rivera, who is close to Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a vocal critic of the Venezuelan government. It is also unclear how Rodríguez might have coordinated efforts to bring Rivera and Gorrín together to lobby officials in the Trump administration in the latter part of 2017, including Gorrín’s meeting with Vice President Mike Pence.
In addition to Rodríguez’s role, PDVSA documents related to Rivera’s contract include the name of Finance Minister Simón Zerpa Delgado, who at the time was the state-run oil company’s chief financial officer.
Rivera’s contract with the PDVSA subsidiary sent shock waves throughout South Florida’s Venezuelan community, given the claim that the deal benefited López, the political mentor of Interim President Juan Guaidó, who is recognized by the United States and almost 60 other countries as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela.
It was Guaidó, as the interim president, who authorized PDV USA to sue Rivera in the breach-of-contract case filed in New York federal court in May.
People close to Guaidó’s mentor, López, said that Rivera is flat-out lying, calling his version absurd and denying categorically that López or his wife, Lilian Tintori, received a single penny from the former congressman or from Gorrín, the Venezuelan businessman closely aligned with the Maduro regime.
Gorrín, who has been indicted in Miami federal court in connection with a massive Venezuelan corruption case involving now-convicted former Treasurer Alejandro Andrade, was seen alongside Rivera in 2017 in U.S. political circles promoting a softer approach to the South American nation.
Those lobbying efforts failed miserably, however, and the Trump administration adopted a wave of tougher measures against the regime in recent years, including sanctions against PDVSA and the inclusion of high-ranking Venezuelan officials on the Department of Treasury’s black list. Such actions include freezing bank and other assets that they may have in the United States.
The sanctions have turned the regime and its officials into pariahs, cutting off their access to the international financial system and forcing PDVSA to sell its oil on the black market at huge discounts.
