WASHINGTON — More than two years ago, Pavel Fuks, a wealthy Ukrainian-Russian developer looking for ways to attract more investment from the United States to his hometown, Kharkiv, Ukraine, enlisted an especially well-connected American to help him: Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mr. Fuks, who years earlier had discussed a Moscow tower project with Donald J. Trump, hired Mr. Giuliani, who in 2018 would become the president’s personal lawyer, under a one-year deal to help improve Kharkiv’s emergency services and bolster its image as a destination for investment.
“I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine — this is stated in the contract,” Mr. Fuks said in an interview in March for an episode of The New York Times’s television show, “The Weekly.” Mr. Fuks added: “It is very important for me that such person as Giuliani tells people that we are a good country, that people can do business with us. That’s what we would like to bring to America’s leaders.”
Mr. Fuks’s description of Mr. Giuliani as a lobbyist further highlighted a controversy over what some Democrats say is a pattern by Mr. Giuliani of providing influence with the Trump administration. Some Democrats have asked whether Mr. Giuliani’s role working in a number of foreign countries fits the legal definition of lobbying and requires him to register as a foreign agent, something Mr. Giuliani has not done.
Mr. Giuliani rejected the use of the word lobbyist to describe his work for Mr. Fuks. “That makes it sounds like I lobbied the U.S. government, which I never did,” he said.
Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that he did lobby Petro O. Poroshenko, who was then the president of Ukraine. But he said that was to pitch a plan developed by his consulting firm, Giuliani Security and Safety, and funded by Mr. Fuks, to put into place emergency management improvements, including a 911-like platform in Kharkiv, where the mayor, Gennady A. Kernes, is a close ally of Mr. Fuks.
Mr. Giuliani traveled to Ukraine for the project, touring the site of a Holocaust memorial in the capital, Kiev, spearheaded by Mr. Fuks as well as appearing at an event in Kharkiv to highlight the plan. “After I finished in Kharkiv, I spent an hour with Poroshenko, which turned into two hours,” he said. “I presented him with the plan.”
Mr. Giuliani said the contract did not call for him to seek American investment, and he did not do so. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, requires Americans to detail payments they receive from foreign governments, politicians or parties for lobbying or public relations work in the United States, but not for legal representation or work done solely overseas.
Mr. Giuliani’s overseas work in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America has drawn criticism from Democrats, who contend it is difficult to separate that work from his close relationship with the president.
That criticism escalated when The Times revealed in May that he was planning to travel to Kiev to urge Volodymyr Zelensky, then the nation’s president-elect, to pursue inquiries into matters that could help Mr. Trump.
Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, in a letter asking the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate, accused Mr. Giuliani of “operating a shadow foreign policy apparatus aimed at influencing upcoming U.S. elections.”
Mr. Giuliani quickly canceled the trip, though he argued that the efforts to influence Ukrainian investigations were related only to his representation of the president and not to his foreign consulting or Mr. Fuks.
Mr. Fuks earned an estimated $270 million in the post-Soviet real estate boom in Moscow, and negotiated with Mr. Trump around 2006 or 2007 over a possible licensing agreement for a Trump Tower in Moscow. After months of negotiations, the deal fell through when Mr. Fuks refused to agree to Mr. Trump’s asking price.
Since then, Mr. Fuks has fallen out of favor in Russia and been included on a sanctions list by the Kremlin.
He has aligned himself more closely with Ukraine, while trying to court influential connections in Washington. He says in the episode of “The Weekly” that he paid $200,000 for V.I.P. access to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, but never received the promised tickets.
Since then, he has been barred from traveling to the United States, and has sued the lobbyist who brokered his inauguration trip.