Former U.S. Rep. Rivera Indicted in Lobbying Case

By Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has indicted former Florida Congressman David Rivera on charges of failing to register to lobby for a sanctioned Venezuelan businessman and laundering money to conceal the work, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The indictment, issued Tuesday, alleges that Rivera, a Miami Republican, violated a law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 2019 and 2020 as he provided consulting and lobbying services in the U.S. for businessman Raul Gorrin.

An office of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in January 2019 placed Gorrin on the “Specialty Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List” because of bribes that Gorrin and another businessman paid to the national treasurer of Venezuela, according to the Rivera indictment. When people are placed on the list, their U.S. assets are blocked.

“On Gorrín’s behalf, Rivera sought to lobby U.S. government officials, including a senior official in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government …, to have Gorrín removed from the SDN (the Specialty Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons) List,” the Justice Department said in a news release Wednesday about the indictment. “Rivera received over $5.5 million for these activities and willfully failed to register under FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), as required by law.”

Rivera, 59, served in the Florida House from 2002 to 2010, including a stint as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, before getting elected to Congress in 2010. He served one term in Washington, losing a re-election bid in 2012.

Rivera also was indicted in 2022 on charges that included accusations of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by representing the government of Venezuela. That case is scheduled for trial in April before U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian, according to an online court docket.

Tuesday’s indictment accused Rivera of seeking to make contact on Gorrin’s behalf with a senior government official, identified only as Government Official-1. It said Rivera tried to make contact “both directly and through a series of intermediaries” and that he “willfully engaged in these activities without registering under FARA.”

The indictment also charged Rivera with five counts of money laundering, including through shell companies, and five counts of “engaging in transactions in criminally derived property.”

“For David Rivera’s consulting and lobbying services to Gorrin, Rivera received over $5.5 million from and on behalf of Gorrin, with the payments transferred to Rivera through a series of Hong Kong intermediary companies,” the indictment said.

It said Rivera received the money through the account of a Florida company, Interamerican Consulting, and used that company to pay two people who helped in the attempt to lobby for Gorrin. One of those people was paid through a Delaware shell company, the indictment said.