Blue Star Strategies

Blue Star Strategies is a Washington lobbying and public affairs firm that also has offices in Brussels, Buenos Aires, Paris and Vienna. Its co-founders, Tramontano and Sally Painter, are well-connected longtime Washington operatives and alums of the Clinton administration. Blue Star Strategies has worked on a host of major endeavors, including the effort to secure permanent normal trade relations between the U.S. and China. Filings with the Justice Department show that in recent years, the firm has worked for clients in Azerbaijan and Bangladesh, and an affiliate of a Latvian bank accused of money laundering by the U.S. Treasury Department. In November 2015, its co-founders took on a troubled client: Burisma Holdings, an energy company based in Ukraine whose founder tussled with British authorities over millions of dollars and who faced accusations of corruption from the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Blue Star did not disclose its work for Burisma in any federal lobbying databases.