Fitzgibbon goes under: Venezuela loses (another) $150,000

By Alek Boyd

Trevor Fitzgibbon, founder of Fitzgibbon Media

UNITED_KINGDOM It turns out the progressive PR firm Fitzgibbon Media was the domain of a sexual predator. A perfect fit then, as “public relations strategy and media relations services” agent of the criminal government of Venezuela.

Fitzgibbon came late to the party. Many had fleeced the primitive Bolivarians before. A new chargé d’affaires, Frenchman Max Sanchez Arvelaiz, contracted this “Domestic and global communications” team, with expertise on “cutting edge human rights, env. and progressive campaigns” as its now defunct Twitter profile claimed, to spread chavista propaganda in America. In light of recent developments, that’ll be another $150,000 worth of Venezuelan public funds gone to waste.

Over a decade ago, Hugo Chavez realised the importance of having agents in DC. Parochial, as he was, Chavez must have thought that a few lobbyists and spin doctors on his payroll could actually have an impact on U.S. foreign policies vis-a-vis Venezuela. The historical record shows different though. Whether it was Patton Boggs, the Venezuela Information Office, Mark Weisbrot and his CEPR, Hollywood has-beens like Danny Glover, or global icons, such as Sean Penn, no U.S. based advocate of chavismo can credibly claim that Bolivarian propaganda has helped, in any positive way, the regime back in Caracas. While it is important to shed light on identity of advocates for such an indefensible regime, it is worth mentioning that chavismo’s owes its battered international image partly to its hapless propagandists. Oliver Stone, for instance, did no favour to the chavista cause when he claimed that Chavez had been “infected with a brutal and aggressive cancer in 2011…” Now, how will anyone reconcile Fitzgibbon’s alleged progressive credentials with allegations of sexual abuse denounced by his staff?

Another totally discredited, and unregistered, agent of Chavismo, also in the employ of Putin’s Russia Today.

The cause of Chavez, and his so called “Bolivarian revolution”, were destined to fail. When he was still the darling of the world’s progressives, he enlisted many celebrities, who would promptly accept paid trips, contracts, deals, cash, and all manner of in-kind payments to pontificate about the new revolution.

Hugo Chavez greets Noam Chomsky

Chavez was teaching people how to read and write! Imagine that! Chavez eradicated illiteracy! Poverty was greatly decreased! In fact it only took Chavez a phone call, to Venezuela’s Institute of National Statistics head, to order a 20% drop. Income increased by billions, after Chavez, personally, managed to increase the price of oil worldwide! A 15,000-kilometer gas pipeline, joining Venezuela and Argentina, was going to be built! “Another world is possible!” claimed an over excited Noam Chomsky in Caracas, during one of those all expenses paid junkets.

The world needed to be informed, and power brokers up in The Hill had to talk Uncle Sam into easing its “tough Imperial stance” against Chavez, on pain of cutting a decades-long, de-facto, free trade agreement that rules to this day, for all intents and purposes, the commercial relations between the two countries. Moreover, without oil income largely generated in the U.S. market, Chavez wouldn’t have been able to embark in his global, revolution-building fantasy.

Like Chavez with his military coup in 1992, his apologists are, presumably, so embarrassed nowadays that they don’t dare boast about former links with chavismo anymore. Case in point Al Cardenas, the Republican stalwart that went from defending the worst white collar Venezuelan criminals to join Squire Patton Boggs, a long time contractor of the Venezuelan regime,retained (and dropped) to defend a nephew of Venezuelan First Lady busted in a DEA sting operation. When I confronted Al Cardenas with this, he twitted(in Spanish) “liars, extortionist”, as if his association with disreputable “businessmen” from Venezuela never happened.

Even the communist Cuban dictatorship, a strategic ally and recipient of billions of dollars worth of welfare from Venezuela, betrayed Chavez and started to warm up to USA’s rapprochement years before the caudillo finally passed, while totally isolated and in mysterious circumstances in Havana.

Breaking news like Fitzgibbon’s should not surprise anyone. If there’s one common characteristic shared by chavismo and its international agents is precisely its moral decay.

I have been researching and writing about corruption since 2002: first invcrisis.com, then in blogger.com, Semana (Colombia), El País (Spain), La Prensa (Panama). The last site I launched, infodio.com, was banned by the Venezuelan regime. You can follow me on Twitter and Medium.