Rivera wants to go to Venezuela for presidential election. But Miami indictment in his way

David Rivera, a former Miami-Dade congressman who built his reputation on bashing the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, wants to travel to Venezuela for work as a consultant for an opposition candidate challenging Venezuela’s socialist president in the upcoming election.

But the Republican has a slight problem.

Rivera has been indicted in Miami on charges of being an unregistered foreign agent for President Nicolas Maduro’s government, stemming from his work as a consultant to help the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, improve its tarnished image in the United States. A Miami federal judge now will have to decide whether Rivera can make the trip, a request that prosecutors will strongly oppose.

In 2017, Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, signed a $50 million contract with the Houston-based subsidiary, PDV USA, to lobby on its behalf in the United States, according to a lawsuit. But, after his company was paid $20 million, Rivera was fired for doing little to no work, the suit says.

As government prosecutors see it, Rivera was really working for Maduro’s interests and had failed to register with the U.S. Department of Justice as foreign agent — a violation that carries up to five years in prison. But the way Rivera sees it, he was actually working for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, not directly for the longtime socialist leader, and didn’t violate any U.S. laws.

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Moreover, Rivera has always maintained that while he was lobbying for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, he was working behind the scenes to topple Maduro — though his consulting company’s contract with PDV USA did not mention that opposition work as one of his tasks.

“Contrary to the government’s false allegations, everything I did in 2017 and 2018 was clearly directed at decapitating the Maduro regime,” Rivera, 58, who lives with his wife in Atlanta but regularly visits Miami, said this week. “And as my history shows, I will continue to do so until the Maduro regime is gone or I stop breathing, whichever comes first.”

If all of this seems confounding, nothing about Rivera’s federal case has been conventional. Although a grand jury indicted him in late 2022, Rivera has yet to be arraigned and enter a plea in Miami federal court because technically he has not hired his lawyer, Edward Shohat, as his permanent legal representative. In South Florida, a defendant cannot enter a plea without permanent counsel.

Over the past year and a half, Rivera has been battling with prosecutors over using the sales proceeds of real estate assets, including his late mother’s Miami-Dade townhouse, to pay his lawyer’s fees. Prosecutors say he can’t use that money because it has been commingled with the income from his alleged criminal activity as a consultant for Venezuela’s government.

Until that dispute is resolved by a federal appeals court, Rivera says he doesn’t have the money to hire Shohat as his permanent lawyer and move forward with his case.

Wants to go to Venezuela and to GOP convention

In the meantime, Rivera is seeking a federal judge’s permission to travel to Venezuela for the upcoming presidential election, as well as to Mexico as a consultant for an educational institute and to the Republican Nation Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July as a Miami-Dade delegate.

Under the conditions of his bond as he awaits trial, his travel is restricted to the Atlanta, Orlando and Miami areas as well as New York City. He has surrendered his passport, and temporarily needs it to make the trips abroad. His request is under review by Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres in Miami federal court.

In his motion to travel to Venezuela, Rivera does not disclose the name of the opposition candidate for whom he wants to work in Venezuela. Formal campaigning in the presidential race got under way at midnight Thursday, with the election on July 28.

In his lawyer’s court filing, Rivera notes that last October the Biden administration partially lifted economic sanctions on Venezuela in recognition of an agreement between Maduro and the Venezuelan political opposition for the upcoming presidential election. Opposition activists have accused Maduro, who is seeking a third term, of using oppressive tactics, including imprisoning opposition members.

In the filing, Rivera cited his opposition work behind the scenes in the 2012, 2013 and 2018 Venezuelan presidential election cycles, and said he has lately advised several leading anti-Maduro candidates on their campaign activities in the United States.

To bolster the basis for his proposed trip to Venezuela, Rivera touts dozens of his publicly reported and unreported activities over the decades as a politician and consultant fighting communism in Cuba and socialism in Venezuela.

Rivera, who had served eight years in the Florida State House, was elected to one term in Congress, from early 2011 to early 2013. His then-25th Congressional District stretched across a great swath of the Everglades, and included parts of Collier, Miami-Dade, and Hendry counties, including the municipalities of Homestead, Leisure City and Cutler Bay.

“In 2012, Rivera was publicly attacked by then-Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro for supporting Venezuelan exile organizations who were opposed to the [then-President Hugo] Chavez regime in Venezuela,” according to his court motion to travel abroad. Chavez died the following year and was replaced by Maduro.

Rivera argues in his court motion that during the period of his indictment, February 2017 to December 2018, he continued and intensified his efforts against the Venezuelan government.

“During the time-frame of the alleged conspiracy, extensive facts directly contradict and put the lie to the government’s allegations that Rivera was acting as an unregistered agent of the Venezuelan government,” his lawyer wrote in the motion seeking approval for travel to Venezuela. “However, because Rivera will never be required to detail these facts for the government prior to trial ... the facts will not be previewed for prosecutors.”

Instead, Rivera’s lawyer proposed showing certain evidence to the judge in his chambers without prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office present. This, too, will have to be approved by the magistrate judge.

Had previously sought to go to Venezuela

This isn’t the first time Rivera has asked a federal judge in Miami to let him travel to Venezuela.

Months after he was indicted on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent, Rivera’s lawyer filed a motion to let him go to Venezuela to visit with a politically connected Caracas attorney facing conspiracy, corruption and money laundering charges in Miami.

The lawyer, Raul Gorrin, who was indicted in 2018, is better known as a TV media mogul with political connections to Venezuelan presidents and has significant real estate investments in the Miami area — all of which have been frozen by the feds.

Gorrin, considered a “fugitive” by prosecutors in Miami, worked behind the scenes advising Rivera while he was consulting for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary. But Rivera’s request to meet with Gorrin, a possible witness for his defense, raised significant legal hurdles, so he eventually dropped it.

In December 2022, federal prosecutors filed an indictment charging Rivera and his Miami-Dade political associate, Esther Nuhfer, with 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.

As Venezuela’s economy was crashing in 2017, Rivera’s business, Interamerican Consulting, collected $20 million from Venezuela’s U.S. subsidiary, PDV USA. Court documents reveal that before he was fired, Rivera diverted more than half of that income — $13 million — to three subcontractors in Miami who supposedly provided “international strategic consulting services” for the Venezuelan firm. The three recipients of the proceeds were his Venezuelan lawyer, Gorrin; his associate, Nuhfer; and a formerly convicted drug trafficker, Hugo Perera.

Then last December, Rivera was additionally charged in the same case with failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income — and diverting some of that money through a political campaign account to himself.

The amended indictment accuses Rivera of three tax crimes, including submitting a false corporate return for his consulting firm in 2017 and attempting to evade taxes on his personal return the following year.