COLUMBUS, Ohio – COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Bernardo Moreno was ready to crack a joke when a radio host in his native Colombia asked him why he would want to trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the toils of the U.S. Senate.
“Remember that my brother, Luis Alberto, just left politics – and there always needs to be a Moreno in politics,” he responded in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, what happens in the world, right? ”
The cheerful response from Moreno, the Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, suggests his family’s deep political connections in both the United States and Colombia. These ties, combined with his family’s considerable wealth in his home country, are the backdrop for Moreno’s journey from owning a single car dealership in Cleveland to becoming Donald Trump’s choice in the crucial state.
“He comes from one of Colombia’s wealthy families, whose wealth goes back generations and whose members retrain themselves through important public positions,” said Philip Chicola, a retired American diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother.
Moreno cast himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family built its way out of rudimentary beginnings in the U.S. thanks to the American Dream. In a statement, he responded to questions about the way he portrayed his origin story and his parents’ sacrifices as “shameful.” He also criticized his Democratic rival, the third-term senator. Sherrod Brownas someone who “grew up with a silver spoon,” a reference to the titular status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors.
Vicky Stockamore, Moreno’s older sister, said in a statement released by Moreno’s campaign that she remembers her family’s trajectory exactly as her brother describes it.
“It took a great sacrifice for my parents to leave their home country and risk a new, unfamiliar life in a foreign place,” she said. “My parents firmly believed that if you work hard, you will succeed, and that is what the American dream means to me.”
Wealth and political connections are nothing new in the Senate, whose members include 15 former governors, a former presidential candidate and at least 10 people worth more than $30 million.
Moreno built his fortune as a luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur. If elected, he would be among the eight richest senators, based on the most recent data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, with an estimated net worth of between $25.5 million and $105.7 million.
Brown has a high-end net worth of about $1 million, according to his 2022 Senate financial disclosure, the most recent available.
Moreno’s business experience and wealth helped him win over Trump during a contentious Senate primary that included questions about a profile created with Moreno’s email account on an adult website — a profile that Moreno’s lawyer said was created by a former intern as a joke. Moreno has maintained Trump’s support and landed a coveted speaking spot at the Republican National Convention this month.
Moreno’s parents raised a family in the United States, where Bernardo Sr. completed a surgical residency at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. His first three children were born in Philadelphia but raised in Bogotá, Colombia, where Bernardo was rector of a school of medicine, one of the main defenders of Colombian surgeons and, later, leader of the government.
Bernie, or Bernardo Jr., the youngest of seven children, was about 5 years old when the family moved to Florida. Before entering politics, Bernie Moreno described his mother as having “outsized privileges” and says she emigrated because she didn’t want her children to be raised “the right way.” Bernie Moreno became an American citizen at age 18.
“Our family came to the United States because our mother wanted her children to grow up here,” Stockamore said. “It would have been easier for us to stay in Colombia, which is why, at first, my father wanted to stay, but my mother was insistent. She knew that growing up in the United States would teach my brothers and me the value of hard work.”
After attending American universities, his eldest son, Luis Alberto Moreno, held several cabinet positions in Colombia. As conservative President Andres Pastrana’s ambassador to the US starting in 1998, he led congressional approval of what remains the largest US aid package to Latin America. Among his legislative partners: then-Democratic Senator. Joe Biden of Delaware, sponsor of the $1.6 billion counternarcotics strategy known as Plan Colombia.
“He was one of the most effective ambassadors in Washington at the time,” said Chicola, the retired U.S. diplomat who worked closely with Luis Alberto Moreno to gain congressional support for the aid. “He was very kind. Both Democrats and Republicans loved him.”
Chicola, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba as a teenager and directed the State Department’s Colombia policy in the late 1990s, said Moreno never mentioned his brother Bernie, who is more than a decade younger, during the their almost monthly breakfasts and other frequent meetings. But he called Bernie Moreno’s immigrant origin story a “gross exaggeration.”
Stockamore said life wasn’t easy when the Morenos arrived in the US. She remembers kids going to the local flea market to sell trinkets to make extra money for the family and having to pay their own way at community college.
Many of Luis Alberto Moreno’s business connections stem from his time as president of the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank, the largest source of long-term financing in Latin America and the Caribbean. During his tenure from 2005 to 2020, he oversaw the largest capital increase in the international bank’s history. But he also drew criticism from U.S. lawmakers for the way in which the bank, whose mission is to combat poverty in the region, lost almost a billion dollars by investing a large part of its cash reserves in mortgage-backed securities, at a time when Wall Street was fleeing the toxic assets blamed for triggering the global financial crisis of 2008. crisis.
Another brother, Roberto Moreno, is co-founder and president of Amarilo Construction, one of the largest construction companies of affordable housing in Colombia. Moreno’s campaign said the brothers maintained clear legal and operational barriers while Luis Alberto Moreno headed the IDB to avoid potential conflicts. But business records show that at least some of the IDB’s financing goes to banks that worked with Amarilo, and Bernie Moreno’s financial disclosures indicate that he is heavily invested in a North American branch of the company.
The IDB lent or underwrote bonds totaling $360 million to two private Colombian banks to promote affordable housing through its private sector lending arm. One of the banks, Banco Davivienda, financed the development of an apartment complex in Bogotá by Amarilo between 2019 and 2020, according to the mortgage lender’s 2021 annual report. Meanwhile, the other financial institution, Bancolombia, signed an alliance in 2020 with Amarilo and Yellowstone Capital Partners, a private equity firm that the construction giant created in 2009 to obtain institutional investment. It has operations in Colombia and the USA
According to Bernie Moreno’s 2023 personal financial disclosure, he is the majority owner of land associated with Yellowstone in Costa Rica worth between $1 million and $5 million. He also invested between $750,000 and $1.5 million in two Yellowstone U.S. investment funds, one of which targets opportunities in the U.S. real estate market.
Luis Alberto Moreno’s most recent activities include serving on the board of The Dow Chemical Company, a major Brazilian bank and the largest Coca-Coca bottler in Mexico. He is also managing director of Allen & Co., a New York-based investment bank that every summer hosts a trading retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the billionaire set and that has done deals for companies ranging from Chewy.com and the New York Mets to Walmart and Facebook. The elder Moreno is also a member of the International Olympic Committee and sits on the World Economic Forum Leadership Council.
Bernie Moreno’s siblings and their spouses have donated more than $134,000 since 2021 to Bernie Moreno’s two Senate runs, campaign finance records show. About half of that amount was returned after Moreno withdrew from the 2021 race.
Moreno’s campaign also received $2,900 in 2021 from Luis Andrade, his cousin. An American citizen, Andrade helped run consulting giant McKinsey & The company did business in Latin America for 25 years before leaving the private sector in 2011 to lead a Colombian government agency tasked with courting private investment in infrastructure.
Among the biggest investors in the road improvements it promoted was Brazil’s Odebrecht, which in 2016 pleaded guilty in the US to charges of paying $788 million in bribes to officials across Latin America, including Colombia.
Although Andrade was never accused of accepting bribes, he was accused of acting improperly in granting an extension of a concession contract controlled by Odebrecht and a Colombian partner, Grupo AVAL. Last year, he was banned from holding the position for 15 years as a result of an administrative disciplinary process, which is now subject to appeal. He also faces criminal charges.
Andrade maintains his innocence and helped US authorities untangle Odebrecht’s corruption network in Colombia. Among his supporters in Washington is former Senator Connie Mack, Republican of Florida. He accused Colombia’s former attorney general, who previously served as a lawyer for Odebrecht’s partner in Colombia, of retaliation after, as director of the infrastructure agency, he decided to cancel Odebrecht’s contract without any compensation for about US$ 300 million in cost overrun claims following the scandal. broken.
Moreno’s daughter, Emily, is the wife of Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former White House and Trump campaign adviser and occasional spokesperson for the Moreno family.
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Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Washington and Astrid Suarez in Bogotá, Colombia, contributed to this report.
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