Connecticut Democrats blast Bob Stefanowski over Saudi Arabia consulting contract

Connecticut Democrats called Monday for Republican Bob Stefanowski to provide more details about his consulting contract with a company in Saudi Arabia, a nation that has been sharply criticized for human rights abuses.

State party chairwoman Nancy DiNardo said Stefanowski should be more transparent as a candidate for the state’s highest office against Gov. Ned Lamont.

“After months of refusing to reveal the clients who helped him earn more than $36 million in the last three years, we now know Bob Stefanowski was making millions on a project endorsed by the Saudi Arabian government,” DiNardo said. “Bob Stefanowski talks about transparency, but hid the facts. What else is he hiding? Why did it take being confronted for Bob to admit his work with the Saudi regime?”

Noting that he has a nondisclosure agreement, Stefanowski kept the issue confidential for more than two years, although some supporters knew about a consulting deal with the Saudis.

Lamont raised questions Friday as he spoke with a small group of reporters in Bloomfield.

“Well, I can see why somebody running for office would want to hide that from the public,” Lamont said. “I think it raises some real questions about his judgment and his independence. I think signing a deal with the Saudis right after the assassination of [Jamal] Khashoggi raises questions about judgment.”

Stefanowski said that he has cut back his Saudi-related work by 98% but said he still makes telephone calls as a consultant.

“It sounds like Bob is still on the payroll. At the same time, he’s a candidate for public office,” Lamont said. “I’m not quite sure if he’s really working it right now or not. I think he’s campaigning pretty much full time. But it does lead to questions. The Saudis are trying to get involved in our political process far and wide. So that’s why I think let things settle out. But those are the questions I have.”

Lamont noted that Stefanowski has complained about the prices and state tax rates of gasoline and diesel fuel in Connecticut for months.

“Standing next to pumps at the gas station and pointing out the high price of gasoline at the same time the Saudis are jacking up the high price of gasoline — that’s who’s paying you — creates questions,” Lamont said. “It sounds like he’s getting paid by the Saudis at the same time he’s running for public office, and nobody would have necessarily known about this unless there was some good investigative journalism to reveal this.”

On Monday, Stefanowski’s campaign said he had the same response that he told reporters last week.

“You’ve got a project that [Democrat] John Kerry went over to look at,’’ Stefanowski said. “He views it as one of the most important projects in the world. John Kerry is Joe Biden’s czar on global climate change. You’ve got a project that’s been endorsed by Kerry. It’s been endorsed by the president. ... I don’t really think a lot of this does matter to the residents of Connecticut, but we’ll see where the governor takes it.’'

In a conference call and a statement last week to reporters, Stefanowski confirmed he works for a company called NEOM, saying that he did not work for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which is an investor in NEOM. Stefanowski said he had visited Saudi Arabia in recent years but never lived there as he worked on a project to reduce global warming.

“Air Products, Inc. based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has teamed up with two Saudi companies – ACWA Power and NEOM – to build the largest green hydrogen facility in the world,’’ he said. “The plant will be located in the Middle East as the unique combination of the sun during the day and wind at night provides the most effective conditions for renewable energy in the world.’’

The facility will produce green-hydrogen-based ammonia for export to international markets and use in the Saudi city of the future, NEOM chief executive officer Nadhmi Al-Nasr has said.

While saying he is now spending most of this time campaigning against Lamont in the Nov. 8 election, Stefanowski declined to reveal the number of hours that he worked on the Saudi project in recent years. But he said that it was not a full-time job as he had other clients.

A multimillionaire, Stefanowski has had high earnings for years. His federal tax returns show that his total income jumped to $15.7 million in 2020 and $13.6 million in 2021 when he was a consultant on the Saudi project — a sharp uptick from his 2019 total of $7.38 million.

Stefanowski’s ties to Saudi Arabia were first revealed last month by Hartford Courant columnist Kevin F. Rennie, who reported that Stefanowski’s consulting firm, Lolo Consulting, LLC, was registered in Saudi Arabia as a “one-person foreign entity” that was “providing senior management consulting services.’’

The commercial registration was filed in Arabic in Saudi Arabia’s capital in February 2020, and the registration is scheduled to expire in June 2023.

Asked at the time if he had ever worked in Saudi Arabia in 2020 and 2021, Stefanowski responded, “I’m not going to comment on a late-night blog from a blogger that is factually incorrect and unsubstantiated. Next question.’’

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes of Greenwich, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Monday in Ridgefield that everything changed in October 2018 with the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

“At that point Chris Murphy in particular, but many of us said, that’s enough,’' Himes said in remarks released by the state Democratic Party. “This is a brutal, murderous regime and regardless of what they do or do not do to assist us in counterterrorism efforts, it’s time to cut ties. In that moment, Bob Stefanowski made a different decision. He said it’s time to go to work for this guy. It’s not my role to judge individual business decisions because there are lot of businesses that do business in Saudi Arabia, but just at the moment in time where Americans were concluding this was not a smart alliance, Bob Stefanowski went exactly the other way.’'

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com