MIAMI — David Rivera may no longer be an elected politician, but he sounded like one when he emerged Tuesday from his first federal court appearance in Miami on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent for the Venezuelan government.
Rivera, a Republican who served one term as a Miami congressman a decade ago, is accused of accepting $20 million in consulting fees from a U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan government’s state-owned oil company that federal prosecutors say was actually a fig leaf for lobbying on behalf of Venezuela and its authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
“Anybody that knows me knows that what the government is alleging is completely false and completely absurd,” Rivera said on the steps of the federal courthouse. “I’ve spent my entire adult life fighting for freedom and democracy not only in Cuba but for many years in Venezuela as well. And we look forward to proving that in court.”
Rivera was arrested Dec. 5 on federal criminal charges stemming from his $50 million consulting contract with that country’s U.S. oil subsidiary that supposedly aimed to improve its tarnished image in the United States.
Rivera, a former player in South Florida politics, and his former Miami-Dade political consultant, Esther Nuhfer, were charged by an indictment accusing them of conspiring to commit offenses against the United States, failing to register as foreign agents as part of their consulting work for Venezuela’s oil subsidiary, PDV USA, and money laundering.
In Miami federal court on Tuesday, Rivera’s arraignment was postponed until Jan. 23 as he decides on hiring his permanent defense lawyers to represent him. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman granted the same bond that he had received in federal court in Atlanta, where he was arrested in early December. Rivera was granted a $200,000 bond co-signed by his wife and sister that imposes a curfew between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., and allows him to travel in South Florida; Orlando; Manhattan; Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, where he lives with his wife and children.
His bond requires him and his wife to surrender their passports; he also cannot use alcohol under any circumstances and controlled substances without a prescription, Goodman said.
The allegations
In the past, Rivera has defended his actions by saying he was really working for the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company — not directly as a consultant for the Venezuelan government in the United States. But the indictment filed by prosecutor Harold Schimkat in Miami says Rivera and Nuhfer were actually lobbying for the Venezuelan government in an effort to normalize relations between the socialist South American country and the United States.
According to the indictment, Rivera and Nuhfer met with an unidentified U.S. senator in Washington, D.C., to discuss the normalization plan in 2017, but to no avail because Maduro’s government ultimately would not make a commitment to such a deal. Sources familiar with the case say Rivera and Nuhfer met with Sen. Marco Rubio, who purchased a home with Rivera when the two were serving in Florida’s House of Representatives. The Miami Republican is not identified in the indictment by name but has confirmed that he met with Rivera and discussed Maduro.
Additionally, the indictment says, Rivera collaborated with a wealthy Venezuelan businessman, Raul Gorrin, who owned a home in Miami, to arrange a meeting between Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas and Maduro in Caracas. On April 2, 2018, the indictment says, Rivera, Gorrin and Sessions met with Maduro and other Venezuelan politicians to discuss normalizing relations between the United States and Venezuela. As part of the meeting, Sessions agreed to carry a letter with that proposal from Maduro to President Donald Trump, but their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.
The indictment accuses Rivera and Nuhfer of conspiring to “unlawfully enrich themselves by engaging in political activities in the United States on behalf of the Government of Venezuela ... in an effort to influence United States foreign policy toward Venezuela.” It further accuses them of trying “to conceal these efforts by failing to register under (federal law) as agents of the Government of Venezuela and by creating the false appearance that they were providing consulting services to PDV USA.“
But Rivera’s temporary defense lawyers, Jeffrey Feldman and Richard Klugh, strongly denied those allegations outside the federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
“This case rests on one central allegation, that allegation is that (former) Congressman David Rivera was an agent for the Venezuelan government and Nicolas Maduro,” Feldman said after the court hearing. “There is not a shred of truth, not one shred of truth, to that allegation. David Rivera is innocent.”
When asked by a Miami Herald reporter why he had not simply registered as a foreign agent when his business, Interamerican Consulting, landed the $50 million lobbying contract with PDV USA in 2017, Rivera insisted that he had already answered the question, though he hadn’t. Then his defense attorneys chimed in.
“There is no duty to register (with the U.S. government) if he’s not an agent of the Venezuelan government or Nicolas Maduro,” Feldman said.
The Money
As Venezuela’s economy was crashing in 2017, the country’s state-owned oil company hired Rivera for a costly public relations campaign to prop up the Venezuelan firm in the United States and to prevent U.S. sanctions. In just a few months, Interamerican Consulting collected $20 million from Venezuela’s U.S. subsidiary, PDV USA. But its $50 million contract abruptly ended without further payment when Rivera was accused of doing little work, according to a lawsuit filed in New York by PDV USA well before the federal indictment in Miami.
Court documents in both the civil and federal case revealed that Rivera diverted more than half of his PDV USA income — $13 million — to three subcontractors in Miami who supposedly provided “international strategic consulting services” for the Venezuelan firm.
One of Rivera’s subcontractors who received millions from his Venezuelan deal was a Miami real estate developer, Hugo Perera, who was convicted in one of South Florida’s biggest drug-trafficking cases, the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald have learned from court records and sources familiar with Perera’s history. Millions also were diverted by Rivera to Miami companies controlled by Nuhfer and Gorrin, according to court records.
Rivera and Nuhfer communicated with Perera and Gorrin about the consulting contract with PDV USA through encrypted text messages, according to the indictment.
Gorrin, who was indicted in a separate foreign corruption and money-laundering case in 2018, is not mentioned by name in the new indictment.
According to sources familiar with the case, both Perera and Gorrin, who at the time had homes on exclusive Fisher Island in Miami, helped Rivera land the public relations contract with the Venezuelan government and its national-oil company’s subsidiary, PDV USA. Perera introduced Gorrin to Rivera, and Gorrin then introduced Rivera to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including foreign minister Delcy Eloina Rodriguez Gomez. She was also an executive at PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company.
But in the end, Rivera and his associates ultimately failed to prevent U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and its oil interests.
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