Alvaro F. fernandez
Editor
Closing ranks around Rivera
By Alejandro Armengol
From his blog Cuaderno de Cuba (Cuban Notebook)
“The Florida legislator, who is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, warned about Beijing's intentions to expand its influence throughout Latin America.”
Not only did Rivera merely repeat his vulgar anti-Castro rhetoric, which appears to constitute an infallible recipe to get to Washington from Miami, but the government station found the least appropriate Congressman to divulge his comments.
According to a report published today (Jan. 20) by El Nuevo Herald, the State Attorney in Miami-Dade County, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, released one of the best prosecuting teams in the investigation into Rep. David Rivera and asked the Police Department in Florida to take the lead in the sensitive investigation.
The prosecution team, led by veteran prosecutor of public corruption cases Richard Scruggs, was removed from Rivera's case last week. Along with Scruggs, Fernandez Rundle also eliminated prosecutor Christine Zahralban and Robert Fielder, a veteran investigator of corruption cases and a former Miami Police detective.
Fernández Rundle's decision comes at a time when the scope of the investigation into Rivera seemed to be expanding along multiple fronts, according to El Nuevo Herald.
Prosecutors and detectives began investigating Rivera, a Miami Republican, weeks before he won his seat in Congress in November, after serving eight years as state legislator.
The investigators found that the Flagler Dog Track paid $510,000 to Millennium Marketing, a company owned by Rivera's mother and godmother, as part of a deal for Rivera to manage a political campaign in favor of gaming machines for the benefit of parimutuel agencies.
For a long time, Rivera denied having received any revenue from greyhound racing and made no mention in his financial statements of Flagler or his agreement with Millennium. But days before taking office in Congress, Rivera admitted that he had received $132,000 in undeclared loans from Millennium, money that Rivera says he returned after his election.
This is not Congressman Rivera's only unclear account, to say the least.
After dropping out of a state Senate race last year to seek a seat in the U.S. Congress, David Rivera set aside tens of thousands of dollars in inactive Senate campaign funds to “thank” supporters of an electoral struggle that he never tried to complete.
Rivera paid the money to a company called ACH Fundraising Strategies, a Miami-based company founded by the daughter of a long-time assistant. Rivera sent a check for $50,000 to ACH on July 15, 2010, the day before the firm began operating as a business.
Those “gratitude campaign dollars” sent to ACH are now being reviewed in an extended investigation into the U.S. representative's personal and campaign accounts previously carried out by the Miami-Dade police and prosecutors, but now been left only to the police.
The federal legislator has a unique tendency to link his accounts with friends and relatives, from his mother and grandmother to his godmother and assistant. Rivera does not seem to look beyond his inner circle when it comes to allocating money.
The least this behavior should cause is suspicion. But the greatest suspicion arises now, when it seems that the power in Miami – Republican by vocation and Batistan by heritage – seems to have decided to close ranks around Rivera. The Herald has been publishing excellent articles on the subject. I hope the trend continues.
What is harder to understand is why a radio station that is funded with taxpayer money would select Rivera to spread his militant anti-Castro comments.
It is further confirmation that Radio and TV Marti have not changed at all, and that nothing resembles their old management style more than the new. Both stations serve only as an appropriate trophy or award for the organizations or legislators in office, according to their power to influence, whether the administration is Republican or Democrat.
