Ex-U.S. Rep. David Rivera arrested. Charges tied to $50 million Venezuela consulting deal

Former Miami Congressman David Rivera was arrested Monday on federal criminal charges, including failing to register as a foreign agent for Venezuela, stemming from his $50 million consulting contract with the country’s oil company that supposedly aimed to improve its tarnished image in the United States.

Rivera, a once-influential player in South Florida politics, and his former Miami-Dade political consultant, Esther Nuhfer, have been 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.

Rivera had his first federal court appearance in Atlanta, where he had been living and was arrested Monday afternoon. But he is expected to be transferred to Miami this week to face charges that were returned on Nov. 16 by a federal grand jury in Miami, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida.

The Miami Herald could not reach Rivera or his defense attorney late Monday, but the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Marshals Service said Rivera had bailed out of jail that afternoon after making an initial appearance in Atlanta federal court. On Tuesday, Rivera’s defense attorney, Jeffrey Feldman, told the Miami Herald that he did not want to comment about the new indictment charging his client with being an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela.

Nuhfer’s defense attorney, Philip Reizenstein, also declined to comment. She is expected to surrender and have her first appearance in Miami federal court on Thursday.

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 in Miami says Rivera and Nuhfer were actually lobbying for the Venezuelan government in an effort to normalize relations between the South American country and the United States, prevent more economic sanctions against President Nicolas Maduro’s government and resolve a legal dispute between an unnamed U.S. oil company and Venezuela.

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, though the Miami Republican is not identified in the indictment by name.

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 President 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.“

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, Rivera’s business, Interamerican Consulting, collected $20 million from Venezuela’s U.S. subsidiary, PDV USA, but its $50 million contract with the former politician abruptly ended when he was accused of doing little work, according to a lawsuit in New York that was filed 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.

READ MORE: Rivera diverted $13 million from Venezuelan deal to convicted drug trafficker, others

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. Perera is not named as a defendant in the indictment filed against Rivera and Nuhfer.

Perera’s main company, PG & Associates, which develops residential projects in Miami, and his other firm, Krome Agronomics, which sells fertilizer products, received a total of $4.85 million from Rivera’s consulting firm as part of his PDV USA contract, civil court records show.

Nuhfer’s Miami business, Communication Solutions, Inc., received a total of $4.5 million from Rivera’s firm, according to civil court records.

Lastly, a Miami company, Interglobal Yacht Management, LLC, which provided maintenance services for Venezuelan businessman Gorrin’s yacht, received a total of $3.75 million from Rivera’s firm.

Rivera and Nuhfer communicated with Perera and Gorrin about the consulting contract with PDV USA through encrypted text messages, according to the indictment.

But it was not clear from the civil and criminal court records whether the recipients of Rivera’s payments — including Nuhfer, Perera and Gorrin — ever did any work as part of his consulting firm’s contract with PDV USA. Gorrin, who was indicted in a separate foreign corruption and money-laundering case in 2018, is also 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.

Between March 2017 and mid-April 2017, Rivera’s business, Interamerican Consulting, received three installment payments totaling $15 million from PDV USA, according to the indictment. “Rivera divided these funds in approximately equal amounts with Esther Nuhfer, Foreign Individual 1, and Individual 1,” says the indictment filed by prosecutor Harry Schimkat.

“Over time, Rivera, Nuhfer, Foreign Individual 1 and Individual 1 used their portions of these funds to pay for various 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 for state office [in 2018],” according to the indictment.

Sources familiar with the FBI-led case say “Foreign Individual 1” is Gorrin, who owns a TV station in Caracas and was close to Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and “Individual 1” is Perera, the Miami developer.

Venezuela’s U.S. subsidiary only became aware of Rivera’s diversion of payments after it sued his company, Interamerican Consulting, in 2020; it is battling with Rivera and his firm’s lawyers over obtaining key evidence from the former politician.

PDV USA, based in New York and the parent company of Houston-based Citgo, is seeking to recover payments totaling $20 million from Rivera’s company in a breach-of-contract suit stemming from their original $50 million agreement signed in 2017, court records show.

Rivera’s firm has filed a counterclaim seeking full payment of the contract.

Rivera, who never registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. government to do consulting work for the Venezuelan firm, had been under scrutiny in the parallel criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Miami for several years, according to sources familiar with the probe. But no one, including Rivera, had been charged in connection with his contract with PDV USA — until now.

Rivera, a one-term Cuban American congressman and former Florida legislator from Miami whose career has been dogged by ethics and campaign-finance violation complaints, once tried to expel a Venezuelan consul in Miami.

He is also a close friend of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, an arch critic of Maduro’s administration in Venezuela. Rivera and Rubio, both Republicans, shared a house in Tallahassee when they were both in the state Legislature.

The new indictment points out that Rivera met in 2017 with “U.S. Senator 1” on two occasions in Washington, D.C., the first at a private residence and the second at a hotel, to discuss the proposed normalization of relations between Venezuela and the United States. Although he’s not identified in the indictment, the Herald has learned that U.S. Senator 1 is Rubio.

At the first meeting, according to the indictment, Rivera told Rubio that Gorrin “had persuaded President Maduro to accept a deal whereby he would hold free and fair elections in Venezuela.” The second meeting involved Rivera, Nuhfer, Rubio, Gorrin and an unnamed Venezuelan politician by phone, the indictment says.

“By mid-July 2017, however, [Gorrin] informed Rivera, Nuhfer, and [Perera] that President Maduro had refused to agree to hold free and fair elections in Venezuela in exchange for reconciliation with the United States,” the indictment says.

Reached on Tuesday, a spokesman for Rubio’s office said Rivera had told the senator that Maduro’s close associate, Gorrin, wanted to deliver a letter to President Trump “outlining an agreement to hold free and fair elections and exit power.” But when Gorrin met briefly with Rubio in Washington that July, he “produced no such letter and failed to even mention the possibility of any such deal.”

Rubio’s spokesman also echoed what was noted by prosecutors in the new indictment: Rivera and his associates “never disclosed to any of the United States officials who they met that they were lobbying on behalf of the Government of Venezuela.”

El Nuevo Herald staff writer Antonio Maria Delgado contributed to this story.