PAY DIRT

Venezuela Has Two Presidents—And Now Two D.C. Lobbying Shops

As the battle for political control of Venezuela plays out in Caracas, it appears a parallel fight may take place in Washington.

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.

With Venezuela still in political chaos, the opposition leader whom the U.S. has recognized as the nation’s new president is beefing up his political muscle in Washington in the hopes of securing additional political support.

While foreign leaders hiring lobbyists to secure such support is standard, the Venezuelan presidency is still very much in a disputed position. That has resulted in a very strange situation in Washington, where the same political entity—the Venezuelan government—currently has two different influence brokers, each representing a different party who claims to be the nation’s rightful leader.

Lobbying on behalf of Juan Guaido, the new U.S.-backed leader, is the powerhouse D.C. firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. That firm has tasked one of its partners, former World Bank Executive Director Eli Whitney Debevoise, with the account. He’ll work alongside Arturo Caraballo, a counsel at the firm who specializes in Latin American issues.

Arnold & Porter will “advise” the new Venezuelan administration on issues including “U.S. economic sanctions, corporate and banking law, U.S. litigation, and international arbitration,” according to Foreign Agents Registration Act documents filed with the Justice Department this week.

The firm’s registration came just two months after the Venezuelan government, under the contested presidency of Nicolas Maduro, registered a different foreign agent. As noted in PAY DIRT at the time, a D.C. resident named Leonardo Flores officially registered as a Venezuelan foreign agent on Dec. 15. An employee of the country’s Washington embassy, Flores told DOJ he planned “to interact with government agencies, elected officials, journalists and academics on behalf of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

Neither Flores nor Arnold & Porter will be required to disclose their lobbying or PR activities until this summer, meaning we won’t know exactly what they’re up to or whom they’re contacting. But as the battle for political control of Venezuela plays out in Caracas, it appears a parallel fight may take place in Washington.

Indeed, on Wednesday, Arnold & Porter also informed a federal judge that it will no longer represent the Maduro administration in court. It now considers its client to be Guaido, the firm said.

Though the firm previously represented the Maduro government in a legal capacity, it wasn’t registered under FARA to do so. Its registration on behalf of the Guiado administration suggests that Arnold & Porter sees its role for the government as more political—the type of activity that will require getting U.S. policymakers to follow suit and back Guaido as the new leader of the oil-rich South American nation.

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