MIAMI — David Rivera, a former Miami-Dade congressman who built his reputation on bashing the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, wants to travel to Venezuela for work as a consultant for an opposition candidate challenging Venezuela’s socialist president in the upcoming election.

But the Republican has a slight problem.

Rivera has been indicted in Miami on charges of being an unregistered foreign agent for President Nicolas Maduro’s government, stemming from his work as a consultant to help the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, improve its tarnished image in the United States. A Miami federal judge now will have to decide whether Rivera can make the trip, a request that prosecutors will strongly oppose.

In 2017, Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, signed a $50 million contract with the Houston-based subsidiary, PDV USA, to lobby on its behalf in the United States, according to a lawsuit. But, after his company was paid $20 million, Rivera was fired for doing little to no work, the suit says.

As government prosecutors see it, Rivera was really working for Maduro’s interests and had failed to register with the U.S. Department of Justice as foreign agent — a violation that carries up to five years in prison. But the way Rivera sees it, he was actually working for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, not directly for the longtime socialist leader, and didn’t violate any U.S. laws.

Moreover, Rivera has always maintained that while he was lobbying for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, he was working behind the scenes to topple Maduro — though his consulting company’s contract with PDV USA did not mention that opposition work as one of his tasks.

“Contrary to the government’s false allegations, everything I did in 2017 and 2018 was clearly directed at decapitating the Maduro regime,” Rivera, 58, who lives with his wife in Atlanta but regularly visits Miami, said this week. “And as my history shows, I will continue to do so until the Maduro regime is gone or I stop breathing, whichever comes first.”

If all of this seems confounding, nothing about Rivera’s federal case has been conventional. Although a grand jury indicted him in late 2022, Rivera has yet to be arraigned and enter a plea in Miami federal court because technically he has not hired his lawyer, Edward Shohat, as his permanent legal representative. In South Florida, a defendant cannot enter a plea without permanent counsel.

Over the past year and a half, Rivera has been battling with prosecutors over using the sales proceeds of real estate assets, including his late mother’s Miami-Dade townhouse, to pay his lawyer’s fees. Prosecutors say he can’t use that money because it has been commingled with the income from his alleged criminal activity as a consultant for Venezuela’s government.

Until that dispute is resolved by a federal appeals court, Rivera says he doesn’t have the money to hire Shohat as his permanent lawyer and move forward with his case.

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