Add another name to the troupe of lobbyists that the super-secret U.S. defense contractor Mina Corp/Red Star has dispatched to Capitol Hill.
Mark F. Lindsay has registered with both houses of Congress as a lobbyist for the company at the center of a congressional inquiry over $1.4 billion in contracts awarded to supply jet fuel to the U.S. airbase in Kyrgyzstan.
Lindsay describes his job as “work[ing] with the Administration and Congress to educate them on the mission of Mina Corp./ Red Star Enterprises Ltd.,” according to the registration form received by the House and Senate July 26.
Congress is investigating whether Mina/Red Star’s “mission” involved payments to the family of a corrupt former Kyrgyz president.
Lindsay was hired by Weil, Gotschal & Manges, which appears to be coordinating Mina Corp.’s response to the dirt kicked up by the Rep. John Tierney and his Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The registration was made in Lindsay’s role as president of White House Consulting Inc., which shares the address of of Lindsay’s employer, The Livingston Group. Lindsay joined the The Livingston Group to run its health care practice last year.
Lindsay was a member of the Obama transition team and ran the Office of Management and Administration in the Clinton White House.
The lobbyist filings exempt Mina, a foreign corporation seeking to influence the U.S. government, from the much more stringent filings required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Under FARA, Mina would be required to reveal the names, residences and nationalities of its directors and officers — the precise information it has worked so hard to conceal.
However, FARA provides an exemption for foreign corporations whose agents register under the weaker Lobbying Disclosure Act.
As a senator, Barack Obama in 2008 co-sponsored a bill that would have eliminated this exemption, the “Closing the Foreign Lobbying Loophole Act.” The bill died in the Foreign Relations Committee.
