Former Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) has been found guilty of lobbying on behalf of Venezuela. The conviction follows a seven-week trial.
Rivera and his associate, Esther Nuhfer, were found guilty on all counts, including failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit money laundering, reports indicate.
Prosecutors claimed that Rivera acted as an agent for former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and received a $50 million contract from then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez.
According to a 2024 news release from the Department of Justice, Rivera “carried out a scheme to provide consulting and lobbying services to sanctioned Venezuelan businessman Raul Gorrín, who was added to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List) on Jan. 8, 2019, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),” between June 2019 through April 2020. Rivera sought to lobby government officials to have Gorrín removed from the SDN List.
The DOJ further said that Rivera “created fraudulent shell companies using names associated with a law firm and with Government Official-1 to give the false appearance that the shell companies were legitimate.” He used the money he received from his activity to “pay individuals who assisted him in his efforts to lobby senior government officials on Gorrín’s behalf, including by making payments through one of the shell companies.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in the March trial. He was not accused of wrongdoing.
According to defense attorney Ed Shohat, Rivera was “working every possible angle to get Nicolás Maduro out. There was not a word in the chats about normalizing relations.”
