MIAMI _ When news broke of former U.S. Rep. David Rivera's $50 million contract with an oil company owned by Venezuela's socialist government, heads turned not only because the Miami Republican has a well-earned reputation as a vocal crusader against communist Cuba.
The consulting contract _ now at the center of a new lawsuit between him and a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-controlled oil company in the U.S. _ has also caught the interest of federal prosecutors and the FBI, sources said.
The central question: Did Rivera register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department after signing the 2017 lobbying agreement with the Venezuelan subsidiary, PDV USA? The short answer: Rivera did not, according to department records.
Whether he broke the law is open to debate; however, former federal prosecutors and defense attorneys said Rivera should have registered as a foreign agent because he was clearly working for the Venezuelan government. His consulting contract was with the Venezuelan subsidiary of the national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA.
"Absolutely yes," said Miami attorney William Norris, a former federal prosecutor who defended one of the so-called Cuban Five defendants in a 2000 spy trial. All five were convicted of being unregistered foreign agents of Fidel Castro, along with other crimes.
"Any prosecutor worth his salt would want to look very closely at it," Norris said Thursday, adding that the incredible amount of Rivera's consulting contract, $50 million, suggests he was expected to use his political contacts in Washington to boost his client's fortunes.
Rivera did not respond to a request for comment Thursday about why he did not register as a foreign agent in his representation of Venezuela's oil subsidiary in America.
While thousands of lobbyists representing hundreds of countries register as foreign agents with the Justice Department, it is not uncommon for consultants to hide their services from the U.S. government. Among them: President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to disclose his representation of the Ukraine government. Failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department carries up to five years in prison.
The law, which took effect in 1938, has increasingly played a prominent role in the U.S. government's efforts to block foreign-influence operations in the United States. Its primary purpose, according to the Justice Department, "is to ensure that the American public and our lawmakers know the source of information that is provided at the behest of a foreign principal, where that information may be intended to influence U.S. public opinion, policy and laws."
In the lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York federal court, lawyers for PDVSA's oil subsidiary said Rivera's company, Interamerican Consulting Inc., was hired to help improve its reputation in America amid an economic collapse in Venezuela. That national oil giant was then under the control of socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who has been reviled by U.S. politicians in the same way as Castro, who was close to Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.
The breach-of-contract suit, first reported by The New York Times, seeks $15 million back from Rivera's firm _ the down payment on what was supposed to be a three-month, $50 million contract.
Reached by the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Rivera would not comment on the specifics of his contract or whether he had taken a paycheck to represent a company controlled by a socialist government.
But, in text messages, he gave a murky explanation, hinting at a scheme to fund Maduro foes with proceeds from the oil consulting contract.
"All those funds went to the opposition for anti-Maduro protests in the summer of 2017. I never saw a penny of it. That's all I know."
Rivera also added that the Trump administration, including the National Security Council and State Department, "were aware of everything."
It is unclear how the Maduro-led government chose Rivera to help prop up the image of its oil subsidiary in the United States. Both Maduro and Venezuela would seem to make an odd pairing for Rivera.
A one-term Cuban-American congressman and former Florida legislator whose career has been dogged by ethics violations and campaign finance investigations, Rivera once tried to expel a Venezuelan consul in Miami and is a close friend of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, an arch critic of the Maduro administration. Rivera and Rubio shared a house in Tallahassee when they were both in the state Legislature.
According to the lawsuit filed against Rivera's consulting firm, the PDVSA subsidiary says it initially paid him $15 million but that he produced only a couple of thin reports before the agreement was ended. His consulting firm "performed no meaningful services under the agreement," the suit concludes. The PDVSA subsidiary is seeking to recover the $15 million it paid to Interamerican Consulting between March and April of 2017, along with compensatory damages.
Despite the falling out, Rivera continued to try to obtain the $35 million balance on his firm's contract with the PDVSA subsidiary, to no avail, according to the suit.
The suit's plaintiff, PDV USA, was controlled by the Maduro administration when it hired Rivera as a consultant _ not the Venezuelan opposition political leadership, headed by Juan Guaido. He is recognized as the interim president of Venezuela by the Trump administration, which last year imposed sanctions against the state-run oil company and its U.S. subsidiary, Citgo.
Lawyers for PDV USA said they are representing the Venezuelan oil subsidiary that is now under the control of Guaido, not Maduro. The subsidiary's Washington law firm, Willkie, Farr & Gallagher, declined to comment about Rivera's claim that he was actually working for Venezuela's opposition group rather than for Maduro. The law firm emphasized that Maduro's government had hired him as a consultant for PDV USA in 2017.
However little Rivera may have done for his Venezuelan oil client in America, the former congressman was spotted during the latter part of 2017 with one of Venezuela's most politically connected businessmen, Raul Gorrin, the owner of a Caracas TV network and Maduro confidant.
Sources told el Nuevo Herald that Rivera joined Gorrin in Washington, D.C., in meetings with Trump administration officials to discuss the future of Venezuela and an exit strategy for Maduro.
Acting as a broker, the media mogul peddled the idea that Maduro and other key government leaders might be willing to negotiate a transition in Venezuela in exchange for amnesty, the sources said. Gorrin's proposal: Maduro would hold a presidential election and admit defeat to the opposition as long as enough guarantees were provided that once out of power he and other key government leaders would not face any legal repercussions.
During this same period, Gorrin's TV network, Globovision, retained the Republican lobbying firm Ballard Partners to assist in selling his plan in Washington.
But Gorrin's proposal gained no traction in the Trump administration, which proceeded to impose sanctions against Venezuelan businessmen and the state-run oil company. The U.S. attorney's office in Miami filed a series of corruption cases against PDVSA officials and business people, including Gorrin, accusing them of stealing billions of dollars from the national oil company and transferring the money to Europe and South Florida, where they bought lavish homes.
