Carlos Curbelo client list could include Venezuelan insider

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A little more than a year ago, when Doral Mayor Luigi Boria was facing a media storm about his relationship with Juan Carlos Tovar — a wealthy developer whose uncle is vice president or something of the national bank in Venezuela and who was arrested for filing a false police report — a reporter spoke to a young gun PR guy who had nothing but good things to say about Tovar.

That PR guy — doing what in the biz is called “crisis management” — was none other than congressional candidate Carlos Curbelo, who is also a lobbyist and media consultant that has hidden his client list by putting his company in his wife’s name and has repeatedly refused to name his paying customers during this campaign.

Read related story: Carlos Curbelo hides lobbying client list under wife’s skirt

Over the weekend, Jim DeFede of CBS4 got Curbelo to confirm on Facing South Florida that, yes, he represented Roberto Isaias, a convicted embezzler in Ecuador who is living as a fugitive in South Florida. Ladra wonders if DeFede could please ask him about Tovar.

Curbelo does not return my calls. Not since Political Cortadito first exposed this little loophole of his, which gives him the legal cover to hide his client list under his wife’s skirt. That’s why he can say he’s done nothing illegal. Because he found a legal way to hide his clients. Doesn’t make it right. So I wonder if Jim, compadre, you could call him and ask about Tovar?

Read related story: We got one! Carlos Curbelo secret clients include fugitive

For background, Ladra already heard it directly from the reporter, a well-respected veteran of political news in the 305, who asked not to be identified or quoted. The journalist can’t remember if he called Curbelo or Curbelo called him, which would be even better, right? But he remembers the conversation. And Curbelo was trying to convince him that Tovar — who by then had been arrested for filing a false police report — was not such a bad guy. He said nothing but nice things about the 30-something businessman who invests millions of dollars in land deals and had some multi-million dollar development plan with Boria’s children in Doral.

Ladra has no reason to distrust this reporter. I called him and he reluctantly admitted to the conversation with Curbelo.

Then former Doral City Manager Joe Carollo — who first outed Tovar as a Venezuelan government insider when Boria was trying to fire him last year and was the subject of Tovar’s false police report — told Ladra that he also heard Curbelo represented Tovar at the time.

“Tovar told this reporter to call Carlos Curbelo because Curbelo represented him,” Carollo said.

He said he confronted Curbelo about this at Miami-Dade Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner in June that featured guest speaker Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

“I ran into Carlos Curbelo and right away he came out nicey nice to say hello to me,” Carollo said. “I brought up how surprised I was that he was representing Tovar, whose uncle is head of the Banco Nacional de Venezuela, this 31-year-old guy who we don’t know where he got his millions to invest in so many land deals. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t acknowledge it. He immediately found a way to break off the conversation.”

Maybe Curbelo wasn’t working for Tovar. Maybe he just did him a favor by calling the media and asking them to back off. Nah. I don’t believe for a minute that he did it for free. This kind of crisis management has value, ladies and gentlemen.

And the point here is that we don’t know because Curbelo has never disclosed his client list. Sure, we’re just making educated guesses based on valid and credible testimony and/or public records. But it is Curbelo who is forcing us to speculate.

“Why should we have to play a guessing game on who your clients are,” DeFede asked him on the live taped show that aired Sunday, characterizing the issue as one of transparency.

“Why is it we have to learn the names on the side,” he asked Elliott Rodriguez.

Ladra wonders if the Miami Herald — who I heard was working on some kind of “clientgate” story about Curbelo that will come out today or tomorrow or over the weekend —  will get any kind of confirmation from candidate, seeing as how they’re so close (which is why Ladra does not expect the story to be too damning; they’ve been looking the other way all this time).

Hopefully, they’ll ask him about Tovar. And maybe also about the Areas company, the subdivision of a Spanish firm that is said to also do business in Cuba, that won a contract for vending at several Florida Turnpike plazas (and, malas lenguas say, for a Miami International Airport contract years ago). Or the security firm that recently won a $100 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

Hopefully we’ll learn about other customers who could possibly now have access to a sitting Congressman if Curbelo is, God forbid, elected.

They should also ask Curbelo what he plans to do with his lobbying firm if that happens,

Is he going to finally put his business, which he willingly admits is his and not his wife’s, back in his name and disclose his clients?

My money is on plan B: He put the business in his wife’s hands and not just in her name (wink, wink).

  Carlos Curbelo, Congressional district 26, Joe Garcia