BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 A flamboyant New York publicist linked to accused Cuban spy Mariano Faget
 denied Wednesday that he passed secrets to Cuba.

 Cuban-born Pedro Font, 57, a man with a troubled financial past and a deep
 interest in doing business with Cuba, confirmed to the Univision television network
 that he has known Faget since childhood and had met with diplomats attached to
 the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.

 But his contacts with the diplomats from Havana were only to renew the Cuban
 passport he still uses for travel, Font told Univision anchorwoman Maria Elena
 Salinas during an interview in the European principality of Monaco.

 His account contradicted a Tuesday report in the Cuban newspaper Granma that
 Font hosted a 1998 meeting in Connecticut between Fernando Remirez de
 Estenoz, in effect Cuba's ambassador to the United States, and Cuban-American
 business people.

 ``I challenge the Cuban government and any other person in the United States to
 show Pedro Font has passed information . . . to Cuba, he said. ``That would be
 humiliating [because] I've raised my children to be anti-Communists.

 Font, whose full name is Pedro Jesus Vidaurreta Font, said he has known Faget
 since childhood because both were sons of senior officers in Cuba's pre-Castro
 armed forces, but he refused to answer substantive questions on the Faget case.

 Font has been identified as the man that Faget telephoned and to whom he
 relayed secret information on a purported Cuban defector soon after Faget
 received the tip from the FBI Feb. 11 -- in fact, an FBI trap to arrest the INS
 official.

 Faget was charged with revealing classified information. Font was not charged,
 and lawyers experienced in espionage cases say he probably did nothing illegal
 unless he passed Faget's tip to Havana.

 ``Having access to sensitive information is not a crime in itself. It's what you do
 with it that makes it a crime, said J. Richard Diaz, Miami attorney for convicted
 Cuban spies Nilo and Linda Hernandez.

 Font's secretary in New York said he returns March 7 from a four-week trip to
 China and Europe.

 Friends and business associates, meanwhile, are describing Font as a bombastic
 businessman with a list of solid successes marred by financial snags.

 ``He was always a controversial person, very original, did things in a different way,
 a very eccentric man who called attention to himself, said Arturo Villar, head of
 Hispanic Market Weekly.

 Font, whose father died in Cuba before Fidel Castro's rise to power, fled to Miami
 with his mother and three sisters while still a teenager in the early 1960s. He
 became active in the entertainment business in Peru and Ecuador at the end of
 the decade, said Humberto Cortina, a Miami businessman who lived in Lima at
 the time.

 Some of his businesses were dogged by complaints of financial shenanigans, and
 one in Ecuador once ran up a bank overdraft of $34,000, according to former
 Ecuadorean banker Jose Regalado, who is now a Miami stockbroker.

 SUCCESS IN NEW YORK

 By the time Font turned up in New York City in 1979, however, he seemed to be
 relatively rich, initially trying to buy a Spanish-language advertising agency and
 eventually setting up a new firm, Font and Vaamonde.

 Font and Vaamonde quickly established itself as a major player in the field,
 winning accounts from Procter & Gamble, WXTV-Channel 41 in New Jersey and
 New York's huge Key supermarket chain.

 He later sold the firm and founded Global Media Distribution, which holds the
 distribution rights for Mexican television giant Televisa's programs in Asia and
 Eastern Europe, Villar said.

 Acquaintances described Font as a man who smokes foot-long cigars, pays an
 office aide just to make him Cuban coffee and once wore a set of progressively
 longer toupees. When he got to the longest, he would announce he needed a
 haircut, they said, and turn up the next day wearing the shortest.

 Font married a wealthy Peruvian woman and they had two children, according to
 friends. The couple were divorced in Miami in 1977.

 One business associate said Font recently closed or sold his $1.3 million home
 in Greenwich, Conn., and bought a home in Denver, a more convenient location
 for doing business with customers in Asia.

 SOUGHT CUBA TRADE

 But friends said Font's real passion for years was the possibility of being able to
 develop business opportunities in Cuba once Washington lifts its trade embargo.

 ``Since about 1990 he was always saying that one had to return to Cuba to do
 business, said one former business associate. ``Usually he would say, `after
 Castro,' but the way he talked sometimes made you wonder.

 According to two former business associates who did not want to be identified,
 Font's son, Peter, has recently boasted that his father was working on a deal to
 market luxury Cuban real estate to European and Latin American business
 people. Font did not address that issue in his interview.

 In 1993, Font, Faget and three other investors established a Florida firm,
 America-Cuba, to be prepared to do business with Cuba when the time came.
 Two of the owners have said the company never did any business.