Giuliani represents a Venezuelan energy executive in Justice probe.
WASHINGTON — When Rudy Giuliani went to Madrid in August to meet with a top aide to the Ukrainian president and press for political investigations sought by President Donald Trump, he made the trip at the behest of a previously unidentified client with very different interests.
While in Spain, Giuliani stayed at a historic estate belonging to Venezuelan energy executive Alejandro Betancourt López, who had hired Trump’s personal attorney to help him contend with an investigation by the Justice Department into alleged money laundering and bribery, according to people familiar with the situation.
A month later, Giuliani was one of several lawyers representing Betancourt in Washington. The lawyers met with the chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division and other government attorneys to argue that the wealthy Venezuelan should not face criminal charges as part of a $1.2 billion money-laundering case filed in Florida last year, said the people, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
The criminal complaint alleges that top officials of the Venezuelan stateowned oil company, elite business leaders and bankers conspired to steal money from the company and then launder it through Miami real estate purchases and other investment schemes.
Betancourt is not one of the eight men charged in the case, a group that includes his cousin. But a person familiar with the matter said that he is referred to in the criminal complaint as a uncharged co-conspirator, as previously reported by the Miami Herald.
Giuliani’s representation of Betancourt — which has not been previously disclosed — is a striking example of how Trump’s lawyer has continued to offer his services to foreign clients with interests before the U.S. government while working on behalf of the president. And it shows how Giuliani — who says he was serving as Trump’s attorney pro bono — has used his work for paying clients to help underwrite his efforts to find political ammunition in Ukraine to benefit the president.
In response to questions about Betancourt, Giuliani wrote in a text, “This is attorney client privilege so I will withstand whatever malicious lies or spin you put on it.”
Eric Creizman, an attorney for Giuliani, declined to comment.
Jon Sale, an attorney for Betancourt, said his client denies any wrongdoing. He declined to comment on Betancourt’s relationship with Giuliani.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the meeting. Justice Department officials were unaware of the Madrid meeting when Giuliani came to meet them, according to a senior Justice Department official, who said the topic of Ukraine did not come up in the discussion.
Giuliani, a former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, is now under scrutiny by the U.S. attorney’s office he once led, which has filed campaign finance charges against two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Investigators are examining Giuliani’s consulting business as part of a broad probe in a raft of possible crimes, including wire fraud and foreign lobbying violations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Giuliani is also a key figure in the ongoing House impeachment inquiry into Trump, in which top government officials have testified that the president’s lawyer led a shadow effort to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into Trump’s rivals.
One of the main purposes of Giuliani’s travel to Spain was to meet with Betancourt, who has made a fortune in work for the Venezuelan government, according to people familiar with the trip.
Betancourt, a young member of Venezuela’s elite, co-founded a company that was awarded $1.8 billion in contracts to build power plants under Venezuela’s former socialist President Hugo Chávez, leading to allegations the company bilked the government, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The company, Derwick
Associates, has denied paying bribes to win its contracts and said the contracts reflected the high cost of doing business in the socialist country.
Sale, who is Betancourt’s lawyer, is a longtime friend of Giuliani’s who attended law school with the former New York mayor. He also briefly represented Giuliani as he responded to congressional inquiries regarding Ukraine, sending a letter to House committees explaining that Giuliani would not comply with a subpoena for documents.
Giuliani has defended his work for foreign clients, arguing that their identities and interests are “irrelevant” to his uncompensated efforts for Trump.