COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Bernie Moreno had a witty comment ready when a radio host in his native Colombia asked him why he wanted to trade his successful professional and personal life in Ohio for the travails of the U.S. Senate.
“Remember that my brother Luis Alberto just left politics – and there must always be a Moreno in politics,” he replied in Spanish during the 2021 interview. “Otherwise, everything happens in the world, right?”
The cheery response from Moreno, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, hints at his family’s close political ties in both the United States and Colombia. Those ties, along with his family’s considerable wealth in their home country, provide the backdrop for Moreno’s journey from owner of a single car dealership in Cleveland to Donald Trump’s candidate in this crucial state.
“He comes from one of Colombia’s wealthy families, whose wealth stretches back generations and whose members rotate through high government positions,” says Philip Chicola, a retired U.S. diplomat who once worked closely with Moreno’s older brother.
Moreno has portrayed himself as a political outsider and immigrant whose family rose from rudimentary beginnings in the U.S. thanks to the American dream. In a statement, he dismissed questions about his portrayal of his origin story and his parents’ sacrifices, calling them “disgraceful.” He also criticized his third-term Democratic rival, Senator Sherrod Brown, as someone who “grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth” – a reference to the incumbent’s status as the Yale-educated son and grandson of doctors.
Vicky Stockamore, Moreno’s older sister, said in a statement provided by Moreno’s campaign team that she remembers her family’s evolution exactly as her brother describes it.
“It was a huge sacrifice for my parents to leave their homeland and start a new, unknown life in a foreign place,” she said. “My parents believed strongly that if you work hard, you can be successful, and that to me is the American dream.”
Wealth and connections in the Senate
Wealth and political connections are nothing novel in the Senate, which includes 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, with an estimated net worth between $25.5 million and $105.7 million, according to the latest data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
According to his most recent 2022 Senate financial disclosure, Brown has a net worth of around $1 million.
Moreno’s business background and wealth helped him persuade Trump during a contentious Senate primary that included questions about a profile created using Moreno’s email account on an adult website – a profile that Moreno’s lawyer said was created as a joke by a former intern. Moreno retained Trump’s support and earned a coveted speaking slot at the Republican National Convention this month.
Moreno’s parents raised their family in the United States, where Bernardo Sr. completed his surgical residency at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Their first three children were born in Philadelphia but grew up in Bogota, Colombia, where Bernardo was dean of a medical school, a leading advocate for Colombian surgeons and later head of government.
Bernie, or Bernardo Jr., the youngest of seven children, was about five years ancient when the family moved to Florida. Before entering politics, Bernie Moreno described his mother as coming from an “overly privileged background” and said she emigrated because she did not want her children to be raised “in a spoiled way.” Bernie Moreno became a U.S. citizen at 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 my father initially wanted to stay, but my mother insisted. She knew that by growing up in the United States, my siblings and I would learn the value of hard work.”
Their eldest child, Luis Alberto Moreno, attended American universities and held several ministerial posts in Colombia. As ambassador to the United States for conservative President Andres Pastrana from 1998, he lobbied Congress for the passage of the largest US aid package for Latin America to date. His parliamentary partners included then-Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, a sponsor of the $1.6 billion anti-drug 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 win congressional support for the aid. “He was very personable. Both Democrats and Republicans liked him.”
Chicola, who immigrated to the United States from Cuba as a teenager and headed the State Department’s Colombia policy in the overdue 1990s, said Moreno never mentioned his brother Bernie, who is more than a decade younger, at their nearly monthly breakfasts and other habitual meetings. But he called Bernie Moreno’s story about his immigrant origins a “gross exaggeration.”
Arrival in the United States
Stockamore said life wasn’t simple when the Morenos first arrived in the U.S. She remembers the children going to the local flea market to sell knick-knacks to earn extra money for the family, and having to pay for her own community college education.
Many of Luis Alberto Moreno’s business relationships date back to 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 boost in the international bank’s history. But he has also been criticized by U.S. lawmakers for how the bank, whose mission is to fight poverty in the region, lost nearly $1 billion by putting a huge portion of its cash reserves into mortgage-backed securities – at a time when Wall Street was fleeing toxic assets blamed for the 2008 global financial crisis.
Another brother, Roberto Moreno, is co-founder and president of Amarilo Construction, one of Colombia’s largest affordable housing construction companies. The Moreno campaign said the brothers maintained clear legal and operational walls while Luis Alberto Moreno ran the IDB to avoid potential conflicts. But company records show that at least some of the IDB’s funds went to banks that worked with Amarilo, and Bernie Moreno’s financial disclosures suggest he is heavily invested in a U.S. subsidiary of the company.
The IDB has lent or guaranteed bonds totaling $360 million to two Colombian private banks to promote affordable housing through its private sector lending arm. One of the banks, Banco Davivienda, financed Amarilo’s development of an apartment elaborate in Bogota 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 the construction giant founded in 2009 to raise institutional investment. It operates in both Colombia and the United States.
According to Bernie Moreno’s 2023 personal financial statement, he is the majority owner of a Yellowstone-related property in Costa Rica valued between $1 million and $5 million. He has also invested between $750,000 and $1.5 million in two of Yellowstone’s U.S. investment funds, one of which targets opportunities in the American real estate market.
Luis Alberto Moreno’s more recent activities include serving on the board of The Dow Chemical Company, a major Brazilian bank and Mexico’s largest Coca-Coca bottler. He is also managing director of Allen & Co., a New York-based investment bank that hosts a billionaires’ conference every summer in Sun Valley, Idaho, and has made deals for companies ranging from Chewy.com and the New York Mets to Walmart and Facebook. Moreno Sr. is also a member of the International Olympic Committee and sits on the World Economic Forum’s leadership council.
Siblings and spouses
Bernie Moreno’s siblings and their spouses have donated more than $134,000 to Bernie Moreno’s two Senate runs since 2021, campaign finance records show. About half of that was returned after Moreno dropped out of the 2021 race.
Moreno’s campaign also received $2,900 from his cousin Luis Andrade in 2021. Andrade, an American citizen, helped run consulting giant McKinsey & Company’s Latin American business for 25 years before leaving the private sector in 2011 to run a Colombian government agency tasked with attracting private infrastructure investment.
Among the largest investors in the highway expansion he promoted was the Brazilian company Odebrecht, which pleaded guilty in the United States in 2016 to paying $788 million in bribes to officials across Latin America, including Colombia.
Although Andrade himself was never charged with bribery, he was accused of acting improperly in the renewal of a concession contract controlled by Odebrecht and a Colombian partner, Grupo AVAL. Last year, he was banned from holding office for 15 years in a disciplinary case that is now under appeal, and he also faces criminal charges.
Andrade maintains his innocence and has helped U.S. authorities unravel Odebrecht’s web of corruption in Colombia. His advocates in Washington include former Senator Connie Mack (Republican of Florida). He has accused Colombia’s former attorney general, who previously served as legal counsel to Odebrecht’s partner in Colombia, of retaliation after he, as director of the infrastructure agency, requested the termination of the contract with Odebrecht without compensation for cost overruns of around $300 million after the scandal became known.
Moreno’s daughter Emily is the wife of Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, a former Trump White House adviser and campaign staffer and sometime spokesman for the Moreno family.
___
Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Washington and Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
