MIAMI (AP) — A grand jury in Washington has returned an indictment against former Congressman David Rivera for failing to register as a foreign agent of a sanctioned Venezuelan media tycoon on whose behalf the Miami Republican allegedly lobbied the Trump administration.

The indictment is the second set of criminal charges to examine Rivera's relationship to Raúl Gorrín, a billionaire businessman charged in 2018 and again in 2024 with bribing senior Venezuelan officials in corrupt deals to embezzle state funds from Nicolas Maduro's administration.

The indictment unsealed on Wednesday alleges that Rivera, starting in 2019, lobbied an unnamed senior official in the executive branch of the U.S. government to remove sanctions against Gorrín. He was aided in that effort by another unnamed individual described as a former U.S. official and resident of New York, prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department's National Security Division said.

Rivera allegedly received over $5.5 million for these activities and failed to register under Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required when contacting U.S. officials on behalf of foreign individuals and companies. He was also charged with money laundering in connection to the undeclared lobbying work.

To promote his criminal activities, Rivera allegedly created shell companies using names associated with a law firm and with the unnamed official to give the false appearance that the shell companies were legitimate, according to the indictment.

Ed Shohat, a Miami defense attorney who represents Rivera, declined to comment, saying he hadn't had time to discuss the indictment with his client.

Rivera was arrested in 2022 in another illegal lobbying case, out of federal court in Miami, tied to a $50 million consulting contract his firm, Interamerican Consulting, signed with a U.S. affiliate of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Prosecutors say the 2017 contract was a ruse to hide a secret campaign by Maduro's government to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.

The Maduro outreach, facilitated by Trump's current incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles when she worked as a Washington lobbyist on behalf of Gorrin's TV network Globovision, ultimately failed. In 2019, Trump recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and imposed stiff oil sanctions on the OPEC nation in a bid to unseat Maduro.

Before the charm offensive unraveled, Gorrín, with Rivera's help, managed to meet with then-Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, according to court records in the earlier criminal complaint and a parallel lawsuit filed against Rivera by Maduro's opponents who now control the U.S. subsidiary of PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-run oil giant.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024