According to Venezuelan NGO Transparencia, the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have amassed over 400 corruption allegations since 1999.
At least 68.311 billion USD of Venezuela’s assets have been compromised in these cases. Transparencia has identified 416 corruption cases among the Chavistas, with the preliminary figure amounting to over 7 times the foreign reserves of Venezuela. There are still other significant cases pending judicial investigations. Five significant corruption cases of Chavismo are listed by Transparencia Venezuela, based on the financial amounts calculated and investigated.
The first case involves a conspiracy with PDVSA contracts amounting to $10 billion. Several companies from the oil sector including Lukoil and Glencore were sued in Miami by PDVSA itself for being involved in this conspiracy over at least a 10-year period. The conspiring companies were clonning PDVSA’s computers to obtain real-time privileged information about bids to defraud the state company.
The second case. Ricardo Salgado, the former president of Portuguese bank Espírito Santo, paid over 100 million euros to Venezuelan officials to secure business with state-owned PDVSA and its subsidiaries Carbozulia, Corpoelec, and various public financial sector clients. The officials then deposited the funds into the bank. The scheme resulted in the diversion of roughly 3.5 billion euros ($4.8 billion USD) from the PDVSA’s accounts between 2007 and 2012 under President Hugo Chávez’s administration. A Lisbon Court of Appeals decision confirmed these facts.
In a third case, Officials from a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela in Vienna, Austria, were accused by the Venezuelan Public Ministry in 2017 of conspiring to undervalue the prices of Venezuelan crude in Europe for the benefit of private individuals. The corruption scheme involved a company hired in 2009 to assess monthly prices of PDVSA products in Europe but intentionally altered information to favor private buyers of Venezuelan oil. The amount involved was $4.8 billion.
In a fourth case, a group of entrepreneurs allegedly used a fraudulent operation to gain $4.5 billion from Venezuelan state-run oil company PDVSA, according to a 2018 report from the US Department of Justice. The scam involved receiving a loan in bolivars and paying it back in dollars at a rate set by the Venezuelan government, which was well below market value. The scammers reportedly used Swiss bank accounts to launder the money. A banker at the Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique (CBH) was accused of being involved in the scheme.
Finally, Transparency has uncovered allegations of a multi-billion-dollar corruption case in Venezuela known as “The 6 of Citgo.” Six ex-directors of PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, were accused by the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office of entering into an international agreement to refinance debt programs without the permission of the national government, using Citgo as collateral, in 2014 and 2015. The accused, sentenced to prison terms of between 8 and 13 years by a Caracas court, were extradited to the US last year under an exchange agreement with Maduro’s government. According to Reuters, at least 3 Venezuelan government ministers knew of the financing deal.
Source : Corruptometro.org
More Stories
De Colombia a Chile: el hilo del Tren de Aragua comienza a desenredarse
Venezuela Set to Join Global Watchdog’s Dirty Money ‘Gray List’
Why Is Venezuela’s Crime Rate Falling?