EX-CONGRESSMAN IS ARRESTED IN VENEZUELA PROBE

Rivera was secretly hired by oil company to improve U.S. ties

A former Republican congressman who was secretly hired for $50 million by Venezuela’s state-run oil company to peddle the prospect of a thaw in U.S.-Venezuela relations to Washington was arrested Monday and charged with conspiracy, failure to register as a foreign agent and other crimes, federal authorities said.

Law enforcement officers arrested former Rep. David Rivera of Florida at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, said Marlene Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida. Rivera, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2013 after a career in the state Legislature, is Cuban American and known in Florida politics as a strident anti-communist.

But from 2017 to 2018, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday and signed by a South Florida grand jury last month, Rivera and a longtime associate, Esther Nuhfer, tried to lobby members of Congress and the White House on behalf of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, a socialist.

For those lobbying efforts, the indictment said, the Venezuelan government paid Rivera at least $23.75 million from the $50 million contract that his consulting firm, Interamerican Consulting, had signed with PDV USA, an American subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA. Rivera then split the money with Nuhfer and other individuals not named in the indictment.

Rivera and Nuhfer never disclosed to the Justice Department that they were representing the Venezuelan government, as required under the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act, the indictment said.

“Instead, Rivera and Nuhfer concealed from public scrutiny and United States officials the existence of the consulting agreement with PDV USA, and the millions of dollars they received to lobby on behalf of the government of Venezuela,” the indictment said.

Rivera and Nuhfer were charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, failure to register as foreign agents, conspiracy to commit money laundering and five counts of engaging in transactions in criminally derived property.

The indictment said that Rivera and Nuhfer spent the money on personal and business expenses, “such as the purchase of real estate, payment of expenses for luxury yachts, and, in Rivera’s case, contributions to his campaign account for state office.”

Jeffrey D. Feldman, a lawyer for Rivera, declined to comment Monday, saying it was “too soon” to do so. Rivera made his initial court appearance before a federal magistrate judge Monday, Rodriguez said.

For more than a decade, Rivera, 57, has been the subject of state and federal investigations into improper campaign dealings, including secretly funneling money to a Democratic candidate to weaken Rivera’s main rival. The Federal Election Commission secured a $465,000 judgment against Rivera in court last year. But before Monday, he had managed to elude criminal charges.

His involvement with a Venezuelan government reviled in South Florida became public in 2020 when PDV USA sued Rivera for breach of contract in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Rivera then countersued PDV USA, saying he was still owed $30 million from the contract. Those cases are pending.