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After eight years as Miami’s mayor, the term-limited Francis Suarez will finally step down at the end of this year. A special runoff election on Tuesday will decide who takes his seat on the dais.
But while some elected officials are leaving office with lighter wallets than when they arrived (cough, cough, Commissioner Joe Carollo), that’s not the case for everyone.
Financial disclosure records obtained by New Times reveal that while serving as mayor, he transformed a modest taxpayer-funded annual salary of $97,000 into a multimillion-dollar fortune, inflated by private consulting gigs and real estate deals. Records (attached at the bottom of this story) show that while his net worth hovered around $400,000 during his first year as mayor, it has since soared to more than $5 million.
Suarez’s personal fortune includes a primary home valued at over $2 million, five investment properties ranging in value from about $200,000 to more than $600,000, a $235,000 boat, plus nearly $600,000 in cryptocurrency.
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Here’s how Suarez’s net worth ballooned during his tenure as Miami’s mayor.
New Times graphic
2018:
$411,704
After serving as a city commissioner for eight years, Suarez was elected as mayor in 2017 and officially began his term in 2018.
2019:
$582,776
During his second year in office, news broke that Suarez allegedly made a backroom deal with David Beckham and Jorge Mas to transform Melreese Golf Course into Miami Freedom Park (Inter Miami’s soccer stadium) to the tune of $1 billion.
2020:
$628,296
In February, Suarez’s chief spokesman, former television reporter Rene Pedrosa, resigned while under police investigation for “personal misconduct.” He was later sentenced to six years in prison on child pornography charges. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, the mayor received regular criticism for breaking protocols — for instance, in May 2020, he was photographed inside a packed restaurant just days after holding a press conference to discuss a surge in COVID-19 cases.
2021:
$1,338,551
Suarez was re-elected as mayor and, in May, joined the newly established Miami office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, where he has worked on and off as a private attorney. The firm notably represents the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), with which Suarez has allegedly developed close ties over the years. A couple of weeks after he began working for the law firm, Suarez became the senior operating partner at private equity firm Dagrosa Capital Partners. This was also the year that he began investing heavily in making Miami a cryptocurrency hub, launching MiamiCoin (RIP), which eventually became worthless and was suspended in 2023.
2022:
$3,454,820
Suarez continued rolling out the red carpet for tech giants from Silicon Valley, even inviting then-Twitter leader Elon Musk to make Miami the company’s new home.
2023:
$4,451,994
In August 2023, Suarez became the first GOP candidate to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after polling at 0.2 percent. The following month, Florida’s Commission on Ethics launched an investigation into him after a complaint alleged he was seen shmoozing with celebrities and wealthy business leaders at the 2023 Miami Grand Prix events. (The commission later dismissed the complaint, finding that he reimbursed the ticket costs and that there was “no probable cause to believe” he accepted gifts in exchange for political favors).
2024:
$5,318,518
In between sitting down for interviews with far-right podcasters, Suarez photobombed the closing ceremony of the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in August 2024. He sat in the front row several seats down from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, heir to the Saudi throne.
