CENTRAL FIGURE IN CUELLAR BRIBERY SCANDAL LINKED TO PORT OF BROWNSVILLE'S $21 MILLION BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

A San Antonio-based political strategist and longtime Democratic strategist and lobbyist who was an alleged middle man in the federal indictment Friday charging U.S. Henry Cuellar and his wife Imelda launder more than $600,000 in bribes is well-known to local residents as a central figure in the

Brownsville Navigation District's $21 million "Bridge to Nowhere" debacle.

The San Antonio Express News cites unnamed sources who say Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, 73, is the Individual 3 named in the indictment filed in federal court. The indictment charges that Individual 3 was one of the middlemen who helped the Cuellars launder the $600,000 in bribes. 

The indictment charges Rendon facilitated the laundering of the money paid to Cuellar and his wife by the government of Azerbaijan from from 2014 through 2021 through "Foreign Bank-1," which the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday identified as Banco Azteca. 

The 54-page indictment states that Rendon also allegedly assisted in setting up a payment structure intended to mask $238,000 in bribes from the bank. It also charges that Rendon met with bank officials in Mexico City on Dec. 17, 2015, to sign a “sham contract” for consulting services to be provided by Imelda Cuellar.

However, Rendon is not identified nor charged of any crime in the indictment.

Further, the government alleges that Cuellar’s wife, a retired tax enforcement officer at the Texas comptroller’s office, “performed little or no legitimate work in exchange for the payments,” according to the 54-page indictment. Rendon also allegedly assisted in setting up a payment structure intended to mask $238,000 in bribes from the bank.

NBC News reported that The congressman and his wife were each released on a $100,000 bond after a first appearance in federal court in Houston, a DOJ spokesperson said Friday afternoon.

Rendon's Role in the BND's Bridge to Nowhere

Rendon worked for  then-U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz who represented the Corpus Christi area in Congress from 1983 to 2010. He is currently CEO of LR Global, described LR Global on his LinkedIn page as a business development firm specializing in renewable energy projects and government relations, with offices in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, San Antonio and Shanghai.

During that time, in 1997, the Port of Brownsville was able to obtain a presidential bridge permit. The purpose of the permit was to build a truck and rail bridge linking the Port of Brownsville to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The bridge would be located on the east side of Matamoros and Brownsville. The Port owned the land leading to the proposed bridge site on the U.S. side. 

Using then-state senator Eddie Lucio Jr. as a go-between, Ortiz and Lencho Rendon were able to convince the board to replace them with Houston-based Dannenbaum Engineering to perform the engineering and  acquiring the permission to build the bridge from Mexico, the State of Tamaulipas and the City of Matamoros.

As a result of the relationship between Rendon and Louis Jones, a Dannenbaum Engineering vice president the port sent million of dollars to consultants and advisors in Mexico – sometimes through money exchange houses – on the advice of Lucio, Rendon, and Ortiz. The payments, they said, would "facilitate" the bridge-building process in Mexico. One of these was a female friend of Rendon's who "worked" out of Monterrey.

(In the photo at right taken during a trade trip to China, Rendon, at far right, accompanies Ortiz, first from left. They went to China so often that many wags said that when they pictured themselves in exotic locales surrounded by young Chinese women they had been "Made in China".)

His, Lucio's, and Ortiz's role in directing the hiring of contractors and vendors to further the sham construction of the bridge was uncovered in a report by BND special prosecutor Charles Willette. In the report he outlines how Dennenbaum was paid $15.4 million from 1997 to 2004 but failed to get consent from Mexican authorities for the bridge.

Willette found that $9.2 million of the money Dannenbaum was not justified. Another $1.7 million paid to the firm was also in question. Once the scandal broke, Lucio, Ortiz, and Rendon sought to distance themselves from the project. This despite the fact that Rendon would bring  intractors and tell him to hire them for the bridge project that at one point BND CEO Raul Besteiro threw up his hands and told him to just take over the port.

 In the end, the port spent $21 million to build the bridge, another $435,000 for legal fees and got...nowhere.

In 2012, federal authorities listed Rendon as one of 25 people from whom they had seized emails  in connection to District 404 Judge Abel Limas cash-for-court favors scandal that resulted in his  conviction and Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos.