DUDUS LOBBY CASE....

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Topic: DUDUS LOBBY CASE....

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TBDGlamma

**MZJA REPORTA**

Status: Offline

Posts: 3999

Date: 06:10 04/17 2010

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Last fall, the blue-chip law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips signed a $400,000 contract to lobby on behalf of the government of Jamaica, spending the next several months talking with the White House and other administration officials about why the United States should not extradite an accused Kingston drug kingpin.

But now, the unusual arrangement has fallen apart amid a flurry of charges and countercharges that have reverberated from Kingston to Washington. The government of Jamaica claims it never hired Manatt; the attorney who arranged the deal says it was all a big misunderstanding; and opposition leaders allege that Jamaica's prime minister was doing the bidding of a fugitive the United States wants to arrest.

And above it all hangs a question: If the government of Jamaica didn't pay Manatt, who did?

The controversy has rocked Jamaican politics and further strained the Caribbean nation's relations with the Obama administration, which has grown increasingly frustrated in its attempts to bring the alleged drug dealer, Christopher "Dudus" Coke, to New York for trial. The country's prime minister, Bruce Golding, has led efforts to resist Coke's extradition, arguing that the efforts to bring him to this country are based on illegal drug and gun charges.

The dispute highlights the opaque and sometimes risky world of international lobbying, in which governments, political parties and foreign companies hire well-connected U.S. lobbyists in an attempt to sway Washington policies to their advantage. The law firm at the center of the Jamaican case is headed by Charles T. Manatt, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who also represents the Dominican Republic, where he served as ambassador a decade ago.

It is not illegal for a foreign government to hire a private law firm to lobby in an extradition case, but it is highly unusual, according to U.S. officials and lobbying experts. Such diplomatic negotiations are usually handled through embassies, government ministries or other official channels, officials said.

"It was unusual, but this whole case is unusual," said one administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Administration officials said they had no reason to believe that Manatt was representing anyone other than the Jamaican government. The Manatt firm, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

Coke, 41, has been labeled one of the world's most dangerous narcotics traffickers by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and is suspected of playing a major role in supplying marijuana, cocaine and weapons to the East Coast of the United States, according to U.S. officials and court documents. Prosecutors say Coke's organization, called the "Shower Posse," operates from an impoverished area of west Kingston called Tivoli Gardens, which is a stronghold of the ruling Jamaica Labor Party and is represented by Golding, the prime minister.

A sharply worded State Department report on global narcotics trafficking released last month said that Jamaica "remains the Caribbean's largest source of marijuana for the United States" and that delays in extraditing Coke and other drug suspects "have called into question Kingston's commitment to law enforcement cooperation with the U.S."

According to Justice Department records filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Manatt signed the contract to represent the government of Jamaica on Oct. 1, about a month after Coke's indictment was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The agreement -- worth $100,000 per quarter to Manatt -- was co-signed by lawyer Harold C.W. Brady of Kingston, a ruling party member who was "authorized on behalf of the government of Jamaica" to make the deal, according to the contract. Brady had already paid just under $50,000 to the U.S. law firm two weeks earlier, records show.

Attorneys from Manatt had at least six contacts with Obama administration officials over the next three months, including one meeting in mid-December that included a Jamaican minister and officials from the State and Justice departments, according to U.S. officials and documents. Those contacted by the law firm included John McShane, the White House's intelligence officer for the Western Hemisphere, and Bisa Williams, a deputy assistant secretary of state who has since been nominated as ambassador to Niger, documents show.

The records filed by Manatt under FARA regulations say only that "treaty issues" were discussed. But administration officials confirmed that the conversations were primarily focused on the Jamaican government's opposition to extraditing Coke.

The Jamaican Embassy in Washington referred questions about the case to the Ministry of Information in Kingston; officials there did not respond to a request for comment.

The Manatt contract became a public issue in Jamaica on March 16, when Peter Phillips, a leading member of the opposition People's National Party, confronted Golding about the arrangement in the Jamaican parliament. Golding denied any knowledge of the agreement, kicking off weeks of back-and-forth allegations between political factions in Kingston.

Phillips said in an interview last week that "at the very least, it appears that the imprimatur of the government of Jamaica was lent to an exercise that was dedicated to serving the interests of Mr. Coke." He also questioned where the money paid to Manatt came from if not the government, suggesting the funds could have come from Coke or his associates.

"Coke is a big figure, a notorious figure, who is very influential in the constituency of the prime minister," Phillips said. "It looks like they cooked up this entire harebrained scheme so they could get the U.S. to stand down, which obviously was not going to work."

Two days after the parliamentary confrontation, a senior Manatt partner, Susan M. Schmidt, filed papers with the Justice Department announcing that the firm had "ceased activities on behalf of the Government of Jamaica" as of Feb. 8. The firm has not reported receiving any payment from Brady beyond the $49,000 retainer on Sept. 18.

Brady, who did not respond to telephone messages left at his office in Kingston, has said in radio interviews that the contract he signed was "a mistake" and that he was actually representing an unidentified private client.

Tom Tavares-Finson, a Labor Party senator who also serves as Coke's defense attorney, said in an interview that "we don't know anything about" the contract with Manatt.

State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet said that "any question of the retention of counsel by the government of Jamaica should be directed to them."

"We are hopeful that we will be able to reach a resolution with the government of Jamaica with respect to the extradition request, in keeping with our solid record of law enforcement cooperation," Luoma-Overstreet said.

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