Lobby firm hired by PPP under federal probe
PPP General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo saunters outside of Capitol Hill, Washington, DC for the promised meeting by the lobby firm with US Congressmen
PPP General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo saunters outside of Capitol Hill, Washington, DC for the promised meeting by the lobby firm with US Congressmen

…allegations grew out of investigations into Russia’s meddling in US elections

US FEDERAL prosecutors in recent weeks have been interviewing witnesses about the flow of foreign money to three powerful law and lobbying firms – one of them recently hired by the People’s Progressive Party to run its elections campaign.

The firm – Mercury Public Affairs, was one of the groups that were recruited by Paul Manafort seven years ago, to help improve the image of the Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, the New York Times reported recently. The PPP on March 5, 2019, signed a contract with Mercury Public Affairs. According to the contract, which was seen by this newspaper, the firm will provide strategic consulting and management services specific to issues facing the party in areas of government relations and issues management.

The services, according to contract, shall include but is not limited to, representing the party before and arranging meetings with the Executive Branch and the Congress of the United States, the Organisation of American States and think-tanks in connection with issues relating to the anticipated general and regional elections. Additionally, according to the contract, the PPP agreed to pay the firm US$ 150,000; US$100,000 of which had to be paid at the time of the signing of the contract and the remainder on May 1, 2019. The PPP also agreed to pay and reimburse the firm for all business expenses in providing the services for it. The party also has to pay the lobby firm for all filing fees, costs and expenses paid or incurred related to compliance requirements in any jurisdiction.

According to a Reuters report on Monday, in a sign that evidence from Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation into alleged Russian interference in US elections may yet ensnare more prominent Washington figures, federal prosecutors in Washington cited a former U.S.

congressman “working for the government of Ukraine” in charges filed on Thursday against former Obama administration official Greg Craig. Craig pleaded not guilty on Friday to lobbying violations and making false statements. The former congressman is not named in Craig’s indictment, but other filings by his former law firm cite identical work done for the firm by Vin Weber, a lobbyist with Mercury Public Affairs, who was a U.S. representative from Minnesota from 1981 to 1993.

Weber disclosed his work for a Ukrainian think-tank, but he did not register as a foreign agent for the government of Ukraine under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which would have required him to disclose his activities in detail, according to a Reuters review of lobbying records.

The Department of Justice is stepping up FARA enforcement after decades of inactivity. Mueller’s investigation has not led to criminal conspiracy charges against Trump or his former associates, but it has exposed previously-hidden foreign lobbying activity by some of Washington’s most prominent lobbyists and prompted a flurry of new registrations since 2017, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, New York Times reported that prosecutors have focused on the role of Skadden Arps’s lead partner on the account, the former Obama White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, in arranging financing and media coverage for his firms’ work, the people familiar with the questioning said. And the prosecutors, they said, have also been asking about the extent to which the lead partners on the accounts for Mercury and Podesta — Vin Weber, a former Republican member of Congress, and the Democratic fund-raiser Tony Podesta — were involved in orchestrating their firms’ day-to-day lobbying and public relations on the account.

The case has drawn intense interest in Washington, in part because of the prominence of the three main figures, each of whom has played high-profile roles in politics and lobbying. But it has also sent shock waves through the influence industry by underscoring a newly-aggressive legal crackdown on lobbyists and lawyers who do lucrative work representing foreign governments without registering as foreign agents.

The focus, by prosecutors, on precisely how the firms were paid for their work, highlights the ripple effects of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. His team’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election spawned the investigation into unregistered foreign lobbying by the firms, which was referred to federal prosecutors in New York, the Times reported.

In recent weeks, persons who worked with the firms on the Ukraine efforts have been summoned to Manhattan for day-long interviews with prosecutors and investigators, according to several persons familiar with the questioning. The individuals spoke under anonymity because of the sensitivity of the on-going investigation. The interviews were run by prosecutors from the office of the United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, with assistance from the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Prosecutors from the Southern District are playing central roles in a number of investigations that have spun out of the special counsel’s work, including the escalating inquiry into President Trump’s inaugural committee. Questions have centered on what the firms’ officials knew about who was funding and directing their work, which occurred in 2012 and 2013, whether they intentionally misrepresented the source of the money and, if so, why.

The work was initially advertised as being directed by a Brussels-based nonprofit group, in the cases of Mercury and Podesta, and the Ukrainian Justice Ministry, in the case of Skadden Arps. But later, it was revealed that the direction for the nonprofit came from Ukraine’s ruling party and the funding for Skadden Arps’s work came from a Ukrainian oligarch.

Specifically, prosecutors have asked whether Mr. Weber may have had political motives to avoid registering as a foreign lobbyist. At the time of the lobbying, Mr. Weber was working as a top foreign policy adviser to the 2012 Republican presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney’s sharply adversarial stance toward Russia was anathema to that of the Russia-aligned politician, Viktor F. Yanukovych, a longtime client of Mr. Manafort who was then president of Ukraine.

Mr. Manafort, who served as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, was convicted of some charges brought by Mr. Mueller’s team and pleaded guilty to others related to his lucrative work on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych. As part of his plea deal, Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with federal investigations, as did his former deputy, Rick Gates, who also pleaded guilty to crimes related to their Ukrainian work. While Mr. Mueller’s team has accused Mr. Manafort of violating his deal, the New York prosecutors handling the inquiries into the work of Mercury, Podesta and Skadden Arps presented new information in recent weeks to witnesses, some of whom had been interviewed months earlier on the matter, according to sources familiar with the questioning.

Mr. Manafort had recruited Skadden Arps to write a report that he intended to use to allay Western human rights concerns about the Ukrainian government’s prosecution and jailing of a political rival of Mr. Yanukovych. Mr. Manafort arranged for the firm to receive $4M funneled from an oligarch through a Cypriot account controlled by Mr. Manafort, according to government filings.

Initially, Mr. Yanukovych’s government claimed that it funded the report with a payment of about $12,000 in public funds, but the arrangement was deemed “highly suspicious” by the Kyiv Post, an influential English-language Ukrainian newspaper. In an op-ed, it cited “speculation that Skadden is being paid by someone on the side,” and urged the firm to come clean. Mr. Manafort told Mr. Craig that the oligarch wanted his involvement to remain anonymous, according to emails cited in a settlement released last month between the firm and the Justice Department. It showed that Skadden Arps declined to reveal the oligarch’s identity under questioning from the department soon after the report was published.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.