By Hedelberto López Blanch* / Special Collaboration for Resumen Latinoamericano
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as has been demonstrated in his year in office, lacks experience in fostering international relations, but he is very knowledgeable about the organizations and individuals involved in the drug trade in the United States, which he has used to advance his political career.
This tough image that Rubio tries to project against those Washington considers allies of drug trafficking contrasts sharply with his scandal-ridden past that links him to drug traffickers, swindlers, corrupt politicians, and mafia money laundering.
In this article, I will present just three examples of his close ties, directly or indirectly, to drug trafficking operations.
His first involvement in these shady dealings was at age 16, when his brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, married to his older sister, Barbara, was arrested in 1987 for trafficking cocaine. He stored the drugs in his West Kendall home and then smuggled them across the country in cigar boxes.
In 1989, Cicilia was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was released in 2000 for cooperating with authorities. He was one of the front men for the major drug trafficker, Mario Tabraue, who smuggled drugs into the United States valued at over $75 million at the time. Tabraue was sentenced to 100 years in prison but was acquitted in 2003 for “good behavior.” Although Rubio lived for a time in the Cicilia home, he maintained that neither he nor his parents knew about the drug trafficking and that Orlando paid him ten dollars a week to bathe each of his dogs. Two law enforcement officers told the New Times weekly that they found the story hard to believe.
After Cicilia’s release, Marco Rubio, then Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, pressured the Division of Real Estate to grant him a real estate agent license. In his 2002 letter of recommendation, he stated, “I have known Mr. Cicilia for over 25 years and I wholeheartedly recommend him for the license.”
Another scandal erupted in 2009 when Rubio announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. At that time, journalistic investigations implicated him in the financing of his campaigns.
The Observer reported that Rubio and his friend, former Congressman David Rivera, not only received thousands of dollars from a PAC linked to criminals operating a Ponzi scheme, but also maintained ties with a lobbyist close to a criminal accused of laundering money for South American cartels.
A PAC is a Political Action Committee, commonly used to designate, regardless of size, a private organization whose purpose is to assist or interfere in elections and to encourage or discourage the passage of certain laws.
The lobbyist was Joe Steinger, the ringleader of the Mutual Benefits Corporation scam, an investment network based in Fort Lauderdale that bought life insurance policies from terminally ill people, members of the gay community in Florida infected with HIV. He then sold them to investors, promising high returns. This network defrauded more than 30,000 people of over $1.2 billion.
Steinger was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014. It is alleged that his company used the purchase of these policies to launder money for Colombian drug cartels and others from around the world.
Steinger’s money reached Rubio’s campaign through lobbyist Alan Mendelsohn, who raised nearly two million dollars and distributed it among various Florida politicians through a political committee called The Ophthalmology PAC.
According to the investigation, Mendelsohn raised funds for Marco Rubio until 2009, even after Steinger’s Ponzi scheme had already been dismantled, according to Florida court and journalistic reports.
A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud in which investors are promised artificially high rates of return with little or no risk.
Another of Rubio’s dealings with drug traffickers involved former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
Democratic congressmen and experts on U.S. politics assert that Hernández’s pardon was proposed to Trump by the current corrupt foreign minister.
Let’s remember that Hernández was imprisoned in the United States with a 45-year sentence imposed by judges in the Southern District of New York for the crime of exporting and importing 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
For years, Rubio’s relationship with the former Honduran president and the powerful firm BGR Group was documented.
An investigative report by the Canadian magazine VICE, currently based in New York, revealed that Juan Orlando Hernández signed a contract in early 2020 with the lobbying firm BGR Group, founded by Republican billionaire Haley Barbour, for a total of $660,000. The contract aimed to bolster his image in Washington as a reliable ally and a fighter against organized crime.
At that time, the president’s legal situation was beginning to unravel, as his brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was sentenced to life imprisonment for trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States.
BGR Group launched a massive publicity campaign in support of the Honduran president, contacting members of Congress, distributing press releases, and reinforcing the perception of Hernández as a trustworthy partner of Washington.
And here again, the name of Marco Rubio appears, who, according to the VICE report, has historically been one of the main beneficiaries of BGR Group’s political contributions.
The firm organized fundraising events for Rubio during his 2010 and 2016 Senate campaigns, as well as his brief presidential campaign. After signing the contract with Honduras, BGR Group contacted 11 congressional staffers; three had worked directly with Rubio.
In other words, the Hernández administration paid a firm linked to a politician who today, from the State Department, participates in shaping foreign policy toward Latin America, attempting to implement the nefarious Monroe Doctrine.
The current US Secretary of State was a frequent visitor to the drug trafficker during his second term, obtained fraudulently but with the backing of the Organization of American States (OAS), then led by the far-right Luis Almagro. During one of his visits, Rubio praised the “fight against drugs” waged by the Hernández government, while his brother, Juan Antonio, was flooding the United States with tons of drugs.
Such are Rubio’s extensive connections with figures involved in drug trafficking, from whose money he has benefited to climb the political ladder.
IMAGE CREDIT: Adán Iglesias Toledo.
(*) Cuban journalist. He writes for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde and the weekly Opciones. He is the author of “Cuban Emigration to the United States,” “Secret Stories of Cuban Doctors in Africa,” and “Miami, Dirty Money,” among others.
Special thanks to the author, Hedelberto López Blanch, for his valuable contribution
