An American lobbying firm led by a former Democratic strategist is the highest-paid Cabinet Office contractor, according to a newly released record.

TheGroup receives $20,000 a month, or $240,000 a year, from Bermuda taxpayers on a “month-to-month” contract for political consulting and lobbying services for the Government in the US Congress and “other relevant” organisations.

Its founder and chairman is former Barack Obama strategist Art Collins, whose company Public Private Partnership Inc was once credited by TheTimes of London with conceiving the controversial plan to bring four Uighurs detained at Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda.

The $20,000 paid to theGroup each month is on top of the $11,083 ($7,916 salary, plus $3,167 housing allowance) paid to Anthony Howell, director of the Government’s Washington Office and its foreign overseas representative.

TheGroup tops a table of 13 Cabinet Office contractors, compiled using a record released by the Cabinet Secretary on March 10 under public access to information, who collectively pick up almost $130,000 a month, or $1.5 million a year, from the public purse.

They include Progressive Labour Party MP Jamahl Simmons, who provided communications support to David Burt, the Premier, and to the Department of Communications, for $7,765 a month until February 26 this year, and former civil servant Lydia Dickens, trading as CB Ltd, who is paid between $16,800 and $19,950 a month to “provide strategic direction, as well as promote and advance legislative initiatives”.

Also listed is Firehouse Communications, which manages the Government’s global public relations and international media engagement, earning £4,400 in London and €4,400 in Brussels, equivalent to a monthly total of about $10,463.

No start or end dates were provided for Firehouse’s contracts.

Another contractor is Alexia Hefti, special adviser to the Government on Middle Eastern matters, who has taken a pay cut of almost $6,000 a month.

Ms Hefti, a lawyer, was on $20,000 a month for her work defining the Government’s “strategic direction” and driving “foreign direct investment opportunities in the Middle East” between April 2023 and March 2024.

However, the record released by the Cabinet Office showed her contract value as $14,346 a month, or $172,152 a year, since April last year, with an end date of March 31.

Ms Hefti was hired as part of a government plan to focus on the Middle East, which saw visits to the region by several Cabinet ministers in 2023 and 2024, including to the United Nations Conference of the Parties — COP28 — in Dubai.

Owen Darrell, then the Government Senate Leader, told the Upper Chamber in December 2023 that her role was to advance opportunities in the Middle East, particularly where they aligned with Bermuda’s economic development strategy.

The contract held by theGroup began on November 1, 2017, and is referred to as “month-to-month” in the Cabinet Office disclosure. It was first reported by The Royal Gazette in December 2017.

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said then that the services of theGroup had been secured for three months, after which there would be a competitive tendering process for a company to provide the Government with “ongoing lobbying, communications and public relations services in Washington”.

“In the coming weeks, the Government will issue an RFP [request for proposals] for a company to provide ongoing lobbying, communications and public relations services in Washington,” she said.

The spokeswoman said theGroup, which calls itself a “leading bipartisan … government relations firm”, represented the Government of Bermuda in Washington, advocating for Bermuda’s interests and lobbying Congress, the federal government, and the financial services industry.

Both chambers of the US Congress — the Senate and the House of Representatives — were controlled by the Republican Party at the time, as they are now.

Bermuda’s interests in Washington are also promoted by Mr Howell, who, according to the disclosed record, reviews and advises on “emerging US policy/legislative measures that may impact” the island, and advises and manages “direct political engagement of ministers on official business in DC and surrounding metro area”.

Little detail is given in the disclosed record about the contract with CB Ltd, which has an end date of July 31.

It increased in value on July 28 last year, to $16,800 to $19,950 monthly, having been between $12,875 and $17,800 a month between August 1, 2023 and July 27, 2024.

The company has previously advised the Government on fintech and public access to information. It is run by Ms Dickens, who was senior manager at the Business Development Unit of the Ministry of Economic Development.

The rest of the contractors are:

• Aliyyah Ahad, who has run the Government’s Brussels Office since September 2020 and is paid $13,070 a month

• Andrew Parsons, Jocene Harmon and Stephen Todd, who have received $5,000 a month since November 2024 as the government chairs for negotiations with the island’s unions for new collective bargaining agreements. The contracts end on December 31 or on completion of negotiations

• Graham Woods, of Curule Consulting, on $84,000 since November 15, 2023, for Personal Information Protection Act 2016 contractor services. His contract ends on October 31. Notices in the Official Gazette show two contracts, in 2018 and 2019, for the same contractor for work related to Pipa

• Onetrust OT Technology, which has a contract for $237,000 over three years for Trust Intelligence platform/modules. The contract is due to end on December 25, 2026

• Virgin Pulse Inc, which is paid $91,000 annually as Global Health platform partner. The contract dates are given as May 2024 to next month

The Gazette has asked the Department of Communications for more information on all the contracts, including whether they will be renewed. We asked whether the contracts, including the one held by theGroup, went through a competitive bidding process.

The disclosure from the Cabinet Secretary was in response to a Pati request from the newspaper in November last year.

Public authorities must publish contracts worth $50,000 and above in the Official Gazette under the Public Access to Information Act, but the Gazette was unable to find notices for any of the contracts listed here.

• To view the record released by the Cabinet Secretary, see Related Media

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