The host of a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner has, in recent years, lobbied the Senate on behalf of Middle East banks as they opposed sanctions on the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Tom Korologos hosted a fundraising lunch for the Colorado Republican in Washington on Wednesday. Suggested donations ranged in price from $500 to $5,000 and checks were made payable to Gardner’s closely watched 2020 re-election campaign, according to an invitation. Gardner’s campaign declined to comment.
Korologos, 85, is a well-connected of Capitol Hill who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and later as an ambassador to Belgium during the George W. Bush administration. In recent years, he’s worked and foreign agent.
Between 2016 and late 2018, Korologos the Association of Banks in Lebanon, according to federal lobbying disclosure forms, and advised his clients on two pieces of legislation that eventually became law. and its supporters; another made it easier for American victims of terrorism that support terrorism. His clients in the Middle East were opposed to both bills.
Hezbollah, a Lebanese group backed by Iran, has been considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department since 1997. It has claimed responsibility for several terror attacks and been blamed or linked to many others, including a 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines and a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.
In 2017, a bipartisan group in Congress co-sponsored the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act to expand sanctions on those who knowingly help the terror group (which is sometimes spelled Hizballah). Among the co-sponsors was Gardner, an outspoken critic of the terror group and its financial backers in Iran.
Lebanese banks grew worried they would be sanctioned and Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally and possible target of the new sanctions, could cause “great damage to Lebanon and its people.” So, the Association of Banks in Lebanon to Capitol Hill in May of 2017 that urged opposition to the sanctions bill.
The Association of Banks in Lebanon on lobbying in the U.S. that year, with all of it going to the international law firm DLA Piper, where . The next year, Korologos’ lobbying firm, TCK International, about $10,000 for lobbying on behalf of Lebanese banks in late 2018, records show.
“Our comments (to Congress) were focused on avoiding unintended consequences on Lebanon’s main pillar of stability, the banking sector,” said Marcelle Henoud, a spokesperson for the Association of Banks in Lebanon, in an email Friday.
It was not the first time Korologos worked on behalf of Middle East banks in the Senate. Disclosure reports show he also , a large Jordanian corporation, between 2014 and 2017. At one point in late 2014, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, legislation that allowed relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks for the deaths of their loved ones.
Gardner, a Republican from Yuma up for re-election next year, repeatedly expressed concern about Hezbollah and Iran during the Obama administration. In , Gardner said Iran “actively supports terrorist groups, many of which, like Hezbollah and Hamas, have killed Americans.” The year before, he criticized Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, it wrongly expects “good faith from a nation that is funding terrorists in Hamas and Hezbollah.” Like most senators, Gardner voted for the bills that sanctioned Hezbollah and made it easier to sue terrorism sponsors.