{"id":2176659,"date":"2026-10-02T21:05:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2176659"},"modified":"2026-10-02T21:05:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:05:03","slug":"ex-us-congressman-david-rivera-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison-for-lobbying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2176659","title":{"rendered":"Ex-US congressman David Rivera sentenced to 10 years in prison for lobbying"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/35c3\/live\/211eb700-be9d-11f1-ad04-23a70b53c1a5.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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\"ReutersReuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A former US congressman has been sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison for money laundering and working as an undeclared foreign agent. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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David Rivera, 61, who was elected as a Florida Republican, was found guilty in May after a seven-week trial heard Venezuela’s state-run oil company hired his consulting firm to lobby members of Congress to help improve US relations with Venezuela.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former housemate of Rivera, and Texas congressman Pete Sessions both testified to the court that they had no idea about his activities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Defence lawyers had said the lobbying was for a US subsidiary of the oil company, not the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rivera’s associate, political consultant Esther Nuhfer, who was tried alongside him, was also found guilty in the case. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As a part of his sentence, Rivera, who served in Congress from 2011-13, must also forfeit his Florida properties. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Federal prosecutors in Florida said Rivera and Nuhfer engaged in a “secret political influence campaign”, receiving a $50m (\u00a337m) contract for three months of work on behalf of a US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA, which is also known as Citgo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors alleged that, in 2017 and 2018, at the behest of former Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro’s government, Rivera and Nuhfer attempted to lobby Rubio – then still a senator and former housemate of Rivera – as well as Kellyanne Conway, a former senior White House adviser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The lobbying came during a moment of tense relations between the US and Venezuela, during President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House when his administration imposed sanctions on the South American country. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Defence lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer argued that the pair did not need to register as foreign agents because their contract was with a US-based subsidiary of a Venezuelan state company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But Judge Melissa Damian said during Friday’s sentencing: “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rubio, who was not implicated in the wrongdoing, testified during the trial that he was close friends with Rivera but was unaware he was working as a lobbyist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/crz98wnx4n1wo”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/35c3\/live\/211eb700-be9d-11f1-ad04-23a70b53c1a5.jpg”] Reuters Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013 A former US congressman has been sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison for money laundering and working as an undeclared foreign agent. David Rivera, 61, who was elected as a Florida Republican, was found guilty in May after a seven-week trial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-2176659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2176659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2176659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2176659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2176659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}