Citgo Petroleum, a US refining arm of Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA, significantly increased its lobbying efforts in 2014. According to data from OpenSecrets.org, Citgo spent $2.16 million on lobbying in Washington, a staggering five-fold rise compared to 2013. This positioned the company as the 9th largest client among more than 100 clients of Cornerstone Government Affairs and the fourth largest at Brownstein Hyatt. Notably, Citgo became the biggest client of both Dutko Grayling and Squire Patton Boggs in 2014.
Patton Boggs client ranking per records at OpenSecrets.org. Current as of Jan 25 2015.
Yes, that Patton Boggs. As mentioned in Ken Silverstein’s article on the lobbying firm from last week:
No one was more indicative or accountable for this dismal state of affairs than Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., who passed away last September… Boggs was an incredibly well-paid lobbyist who ran his firm like a brothel, allegedly stating, “We pick our clients by taking the first one who comes in the door.” Due to this practice, Boggs and his firm worked with a client list that included some of America’s largest and most questionable corporations and even some of the most notorious dictators in the world.
This article is really worth the read, so click here. Being the top client of Patton Boggs takes a lot of effort. The company represented 179 paying clients the previous year. Following PDVSA, several companies with considerable regulatory issues show up. (Note that all figures were accurate at the time of writing; future disclosures may affect the rankings.) So, what was all that money used for? We may never truly know, but we can guess. There was a prominent Citgo-related political issue that arose in Washington last year that hadn’t been present the previous year, specifically concerning sanctions against Venezuelan human rights violators. Initially, a very minor sanctions bill was stalled in March due to effective concern-trolling. Later, in August, Mary Landrieu blocked the bill again under Citgo’s influence, as reported by Caracas Chronicles at that time. While we can’t be sure, it’s a reasonable assumption that this money was spent working to protect Venezuela’s political leadership from potential US visa revocations. This speculation arises from Citgo’s patterns of behavior, which seem more akin to that of a state actor than a typical oil company. Consider their acquisition of aircraft for Venezuelan state airlines, or their foundation’s contributions aiding Venezuelans with bone marrow transplants in Italy, funding flood relief efforts in Venezuela, and renovating the Venezuelan embassy in DC. If these were indeed the objectives, they succeeded temporarily; however, the sanctions bill eventually passed. It came into force in December, and soon, the list of sanctioned individuals was augmented to include family members of alleged rights violators. Fortunately for the Venezuelan people who footed that $2.1 million bill, they probably wouldn’t had anything worthwhile to do with that money, as there are no unmet human needs in this tropical socialist utopia. Bonus: Petroleos de Venezuela (not shown as PDVSA or Citgo) allocated another $100,000, according to OpenSecrets, thus ranking the company as the second largest client of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications.
UPDATE: Alek Boyd shed light on Venezuela’s close ties with Patton Boggs nearly a decade ago.