Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
One of the Qatari government lobbyists in Washington has been greasing the wheels with donations to members of Congress who agreed to meet with high-ranking Qatari officials.
New Foreign Agent Registration Act filings for the firm Ogilvy Government Affairs show that Moses Mercado, the firm’s chairman, spent much of the summer seeking sit-downs with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—in particular members from Texas, where the Qatari government just announced plans to open a $10 billion liquified-natural-gas terminal.