A Kuwaiti private equity firm has turned to paying op-ed writers as part of its multimillion dollar pressure campaign for the emirate to drop embezzlement charges against its former CEO.
A new lobbying disclosure from New York communications firm Marathon Strategies shows a total of $11,500 was paid for “communications” services to consulting firms JSM Consulting and Gulf State Analytics in the six months through October as part of Marathon's lobbying work for KGL Investment. During that time period, the consulting firms’ top executives wrote op-eds mirroring KGL’s claims that its Russian executive Marsha Lazareva was being unfairly hounded by a corrupt justice system — without ever revealing their financial links to Marathon or its foreign client.
The op-eds are but the latest example of an opaque practice that continues to plague US and other media despite a crackdown by US authorities worried about transparency.
For example, a lobbyist for an armed Iranian opposition group paid an online journalist $1,000 after she scored an “exclusive interview” with the group’s representative to the United States, according to lobbying disclosures for the six months through June. Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan lobbyist AF International paid Adelle Nazarian $1,000 for “research services,” and on July 18, the right-wing Big League Politics website ran her profile of Komala’s US representative Salah Bayaziddi in which he applauds the Trump administration’s tough stance against Tehran. The story did not disclose the payment. Nazarian did not respond to a request for comment.
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