A former member of Congress is heading to federal prison for a decade after a jury found that he secretly used his political access to advance the interests of a hostile foreign regime.
Former Florida Republican Rep. David Rivera, 61, was sentenced Friday to 10 years behind bars for acting as an unregistered agent of Venezuela’s socialist government and laundering millions of dollars tied to that work.
The Justice Department’s announcement made the stakes plain: political connections do not become a private asset that former officeholders can quietly sell to a foreign government.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced the sentence and the crimes that put Rivera behind bars:
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida says U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian imposed the sentence after Rivera was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violating FARA, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts of engaging in transactions involving criminally derived property.
According to the federal case, Rivera and political consultant Esther Nuhfer obtained a $50 million contract with a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Prosecutors proved that the pair worked to advance the Venezuelan regime’s interests in Washington without registering as foreign agents.
The operation reached into the highest levels of American politics. Rivera and Nuhfer lobbied officials including then-Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Pete Sessions, and arranged contacts between American policymakers and senior Venezuelan figures including Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez.
Rivera’s conviction in May established that this was not an innocent consulting dispute. The same federal office summarized the jury’s verdict at the time:
Trial evidence showed Rivera deposited approximately $1.5 million from the contract into his Florida state congressional campaign account between March 2017 and August 2018. Nuhfer used roughly $455,000 in proceeds to buy a home in Key Colony Beach, according to the Justice Department.
Nuhfer, 52, was convicted of FARA and money-laundering offenses and previously received a five-year federal prison sentence.
The money trail was accompanied by efforts to conceal what was happening. Prosecutors said Rivera and Nuhfer used coded language in text messages to describe their work, while local reporting detailed backdated documents and sham agreements used to explain major transfers.
CBS News Miami reports that Rivera had faced a statutory maximum of 60 years in prison and a potential $20 million asset-forfeiture judgment. He had remained in federal custody since the jury returned its guilty verdict on May 1.
The local report also says jurors determined that Rivera properties in Doral and the Florida Keys would be forfeited to the government. Prosecutors argued that he had used the anti-communist reputation he built in South Florida while secretly taking money connected to Maduro’s government.
The 11-count indictment was unsealed in 2022. CBS says trial evidence included an encrypted chat group called “MIA,” where participants used nicknames and code words: Maduro was “the bus driver,” Sessions was “Sombrero,” Rodríguez was “The Lady in Red,” and millions of dollars were “melons.”
Prosecutors also said backdated documents and sham agreements were used to conceal the operation, including an agreement cited to justify a $3.75 million wire to a South Florida company that maintained Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín’s yacht.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office followed its public announcement with the full federal sentencing release and case record:
Rivera’s attorneys maintained that his work was commercial rather than political and said they plan to appeal. They argued that the consulting agreement was aimed at bringing ExxonMobil back to Venezuela and did not require a foreign-agent registration.
Jurors rejected that defense, and Judge Damian rejected Rivera’s effort to reduce the sentencing range.
The Associated Press reports that Rivera has been jailed since his May conviction and that he faces additional federal charges in Washington in a related foreign-lobbying case. His lawyers applied for a presidential pardon in June, according to the report.
Rivera served one term in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013 after years in the Florida Legislature. That background made the betrayal especially sharp for a South Florida community built in large part by families who fled communist tyranny.
U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones said Rivera knew that history and nevertheless used the access and relationships entrusted to him to advance the Maduro regime’s interests for millions of dollars.
Ten years in federal prison is the consequence. It is also a warning to every well-connected political figure who thinks foreign money can buy secret influence in Washington without accountability.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Former Congressman Hit With 10-Year Federal Prison Sentence Over Secret Foreign Influence And Money Laundering Scheme appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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