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When Miamians ask where in the world their mayor is, the answer is: no one can guess.
Mayor Francis Suarez, who once had a normal presence, now rarely attends commission meetings. Your workplace remains empty. His schedule as mayor is marked as busy, with no additional details, infrequently for weeks at a time.
It turns out that Suarez is not in the city for which he was elected. The mayor spent at least 85 days away from Miami in 2022, roughly a portion of them overseas, mostly in the Middle East, according to an investigation by the city’s archives via the Miami Herald. He spent about a week in Qatar, two weeks in Saudi Arabia, and a few days in the United Arab Emirates. It is also scheduled to be released in 2023.
Suarez probably won’t elaborate on what he’s doing in the Middle East, who he’ll meet with or who will pay the bills. All he’ll say is that he travels a lot for his job as a personal lawyer at a foreign law firm, the most lucrative of the 14 side businesses that have transformed him from a debt-ridden city commissioner to a billionaire mayor.
His penchant for secrecy — Suárez’s refusal to call his legal clients — means he’s on the verge of identifying potential conflicts of interest between his public office, where his annual salary is $130,000, and his much more lucrative personal business activities.
Each day, Suarez fluidly alternates between his public and personal roles, according to the mayor’s office. Therefore, it can be difficult to know what interests you represent when you spend your time abroad, in the company of members of Arab royal families and others to infiltrate. Miami.
Suarez says he keeps a wall between his duties as a part-time mayor and his outdoor job. Still, his moves at City Hall seem to benefit, if not his private clients, those of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart.
But one thing is clear: The already blurred lines between Suarez’s mayoral duties and his non-public monetary interests become blurrier as he moves away from Miami.
Suarez’s boss at the law firm, founder and chairman John Quinn, praised Suarez, saying “the mayor is a charismatic lawyer” who the firm sends to the Middle East and elsewhere to “serve clients and grow our business.”
On a trip to Qatar, in the Middle East, Suarez attended a World Cup semifinal with soccer star David Beckham, who, with the mayor’s assistance, had just won the city’s approval for a multimillion-dollar stadium contract for his Major League Soccer team. .
The citizens of Miami discovered that their mayor was when Beckham took a selfie with Suarez and posted it on Instagram with the text: “Miami Boys in town. “State ethics investigators are looking lately into whether Beckham gave Suarez a loose ticket, which would be illegal. as Beckham is a registered city lobbyist.
Following Beckham’s no-bid deal that the mayor helped broker in closed-door meetings with other commissioners, international superstar Lionel Messi came to play for Miami, igniting an explosion of interest in Major League Soccer — a client of the firm where Suarez works.
A Quinn Emanuel spokesperson said the firm worked with outside ethics counsel to develop guidelines that “draw a clear line of separation between his mayoral and law firm roles.”
“Mr. Suarez and our entire society have been vigilant in complying with it,” the spokesman said, adding that the company never sent Suarez to Qatar and that none of its clients, including FIFA, the framework that governs world soccer, bought tickets for the match.
Whether or not he’s in town on business, Suarez typically works with tax-funded police officers who act as bodyguards, whose receipts, itineraries and other documents are the only written record of his life when he’s not in Miami. The Herald has pieced together a combination of Suarez’s relationships. through those documents.
The records tell the story of an absent mayor who was absent from the city for one-third of all town meetings, leaving very important decisions in the hands of a dysfunctional organization of city commissioners, one of whom was sentenced to a $63. 5 million civil judgment. public workplace to harass his enemies, and some others who were recently accused of corruption and fired from their workplace.
Although Suarez says the city doesn’t cover his expenses, taxpayers have spent at least $164,579 on expenses to send officials out of town with the mayor, adding when he’s on personal business, a practice harshly criticized by one. City Commissioner Elected on a Reform Agenda. This figure includes items such as hotels, airfare, and meals. Wage prices are separated.
But Suarez defended the practice, telling the Herald that, thanks to his travels, “the world now sees Miami as a thriving, dynamic, cutting-edge place. “
“I have balanced my work on behalf of netpaintings with my personal obligations regarding my ability within the regulations set forth for elected officials,” he said.
However, one of Suarez’s other side hustles is already struggling.
He is under federal investigation for his $10,000-a-month contract with a developer who used the mayor’s contract to accelerate a structuring project.
While some details of the mayor’s travels have been previously reported, an analysis of data compiled from the police records obtained by the Herald provides the most comprehensive picture yet of how the mayor spends his time when he is not at City Hall.
However, the mayor recently fled to Saudi Arabia without his city’s security services. This holiday, as well as any other unaccompanied holiday, is not included in the data.
Though he says he serves taxpayers as a peddler of Miami’s charms, constituents told the Herald about times when they wanted him to be there to help them solve local problems.
Suarez met with FIFA officials in Qatar, according to sources, and literally rode a camel at the invitation of an ambassador in early 2021, as the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency entered its second year. He was in Dubai last year when the municipal commission approved a questionable redistricting plan. And it did so at the World Cup in Qatar, when the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city over the redistricting plan, saying it amounted to racial gerrymandering.
Bob Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University who specializes in ethics, doubts the mayor’s presence made a difference.
“As a weak part-time mayor, I’m not sure the electorate can expect him to do anything, and it doesn’t seem like he wants to be on City Hall doing nothing,” Jarvis said.
But Nathan Kurland, a Coconut Grove resident, remembers being disappointed that Suarez didn’t attend the town hall where he and other citizens opposed the redistricting plan, which he feared would disenfranchise black voters in the district.
“I think he picked a bad time to be away from the city of Miami,” Kurland said.
On March 24, 2022, the day of the contentious vote, Suarez was in the United Arab Emirates — where Quinn Emanuel represents several sovereign wealth funds and other government entities — signing a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Emirati officials alongside the crown prince of Dubai.
The Dubai government celebrated the twinning agreement on social media. But Suarez’s Instagram focused on another proclamation signed that day, in which the mayor designated March 24 as Miami’s official “flan day. “His Instagram post appeared on a local flan-related occasion with a video of Suarez taking a bite of the added dessert.
Suarez did not announce the Miami-Dubai deal at City Hall, leaving City Manager Art Noriega’s management aware of the memo’s existence for more than a year, until the Herald asked for a copy.
The agreement explains that Miami and Dubai will mutually plan projects in sectors such as tourism, public protection and business promotion. Asked for clarification, the mayor’s communications director, Stephanie Severino, stated that such agreements “are not intended to provide immediate and measurable benefits. ” “
“The purpose is to be willing to build relationships,” he said.
The UAE leaned on its new relationship with Miami at least once, emails show.
In August, officials from the UAE embassy contacted the mayor’s office to establish “some engagements with the private sector in the city of Miami. “
Saeed Mubarak Al Hajeri, deputy minister of the UAE Foreign Ministry, was scheduled to travel to Florida in September, embassy officials said in an email to the mayor’s top adviser, Jeremy Schwarz.
“Who would it be to communicate with?” The mayor’s aide responded by asking the embassy “to kindly inform us of the next steps. “
The backlash included a list of four influential Miami brokers, including the head of hedge fund Citadel, Ken Griffin, a client of Quinn Emanuel with whom Suarez had recently struck up a relationship. According to the email, the Emirati official was looking to explore the possibility of a “future collaboration” with the billionaire and gauge Citadel’s interest in opening one in the United Arab Emirates.
Citadel spokesman Zia Ahmed said neither Griffin nor his company had been contacted through the mayor’s office.
“As for your other ridiculous questions,” Ahmed wrote, “we are not obligated to discuss our worker meetings or our business strategy with the Miami Herald. “
The city does not pay for any of Suarez’s excursions abroad, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. But in reality, taxpayers continue to bear significant costs.
Some of Miami’s most no-nonsense police officers, a highly trained organization known as Sergeants-at-Arms, were there to protect Suarez on his overseas escapades. The city will pay their salaries and benefits, as well as their food for each day they are away. . Sometimes, the municipality also covers the bill for hotels and flights.
When it’s Quinn Emanuel’s, the company or its clients cover Suarez’s expenses, as well as plane and hotel tickets for its security services, according to statements from Quinn Emanuel and the mayor’s office.
In cases where Suarez traveled abroad only as mayor, his expenses were either covered through the “entity inviting the mayor to participate,” or the bill was paid through the U. S. Conference of Mayors, where Suarez served a term as president, according to the mayor. . workplace. The mayor’s office attributes the significant construction in its part to his paintings for the U. S. Conference of Mayors. But the organization did not respond to questions about Suarez’s trips it had funded.
While he’s not the first Miami official to travel with armed agents, Suarez expanded the program, especially after becoming mayor. Often, as records show, Suarez is accompanied by two (and even three) police officers when he leaves town.
Police Chief Manny Morales defended the program, pointing to “a disturbing escalation of harassment and threats against public servants across our country. “He said the point of coverage is “in line with national practices. “
But his predecessor, former leader Jorge Colina, who rose to police leader early in Suarez’s term, criticizes the program, which he says endangers Miami officials because they “surely have no jurisdiction outside the city of Miami. “
To Colina, the biggest concern is “what happens if you have to use your firearm?”
Colina said he raised his concerns with Suarez, but his resolution was rejected, and records show the former leader ultimately approved dozens of security checkpoints that traveled with the mayor.
Looking back, Colina said the benefits did not outweigh the costs.
“Let’s be honest. You don’t have to go to Qatar or Saudi Arabia and take a sergeant-at-arms with you,” he said. “No one will come by to recognize him and hurt him because he’s the mayor of Miami. “
Those close to Suarez say the mayor has changed, especially between his first and second terms.
Before Suarez, Miami’s mayors, who had a veto but no vote on the city commission, watched the meetings from the public. After being elected mayor for the first time in 2017, Suarez was assigned a seat next to the city manager on the dais.
“I knew other people by name. I had their phone numbers,” said Mike Hernandez, a Telemundo political analyst who worked on Suarez’s first crusade for a commission in 2009. “I think he’s moved away from that style. “
The replacement came after Suarez proposed amending the city’s bylaws to give himself more executive powers, making his position one guilty of managing the city’s day-to-day affairs. But the electorate rejected the proposal, and over time, the mayor became less. of a presence at City Hall, located in the former headquarters of Pan Am Airlines on Dinner Key. He took on more personal work, spent more time abroad, his net worth skyrocketed, and he was running, shortly, for president.
“It’s like I have my eyes on Washington,” Hernandez said, “instead of Pan American Drive. “
This report is based on an investigation of Mayor Francis Suarez’s police records, emails, lobbyist registration forms, social media posts, and OurAirports knowledge.
Sarah Blaskey | Investigative Journalist
Joey Arrows | City of Miami Reporter
Tess Riski | Journalist of the Municipal Government
Susan Merriam | Photojournalist
Casey Frank | Senior Survey Writer
Dana Banker | Senior Managing Editor
Rachel Handley | illustrator
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