Collage showing various organizations and political and business personalities behind the constant coup attempts against Venezuela. Photo: Diario Red.
By Román Cuesta – Sep 23, 2024
As I compose this piece, the threat of another armed intervention is hovering over the heads of Venezuelans. A few days ago, the infamous mercenary Erik Prince (Blackwater), who had made some statements at the end of July threatening Nicolás Maduro, launched a countdown whose end “will mark a definitive change” in Venezuela.
Prince made an offer to the US government and the ultra-right supporters of María Corina Machado—provided they agree on the amount of the reward—to perpetrate a coup in Venezuela and capture or kill the president and his closest collaborators.
It could be a neo-fascist blunder committed by Elon Musk and his gang of super-rich to create uncertainty and anxiety among the Venezuelan people, or another coup d’état like the one carried out by Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan general Cliver Antonio Alcalá Cordones, the mercenary Jordan Goudreau (Silvercorp) and Juan José Rendón—the Operation Gideon that was “backed” by a $213 million contract, signed in October 2019 and that they tried to execute, unsuccessfully, in May 2020, a month after María Corina Machado was designated by Atlas Network and its networks of influence as successor to the failed Guaidó.
On September 23, 2024 the Venezuelan government announced the seizure of more than 400 pistols and assault rifles and the arrest of several individuals, among them a US citizen active member of the Navy SEALs and two Spaniards identified as CNI agents. And in this struggle for the narrative, the discovery of the involvement of the alleged Spanish intelligence agents may seem to be a “timely move,” but it would not be the first time that Spanish spies have contacted the Venezuelan ultra right at the dawn of a coup.
In the coup against the government of Hugo Chávez in 2002, the Spanish Embassy in Caracas and its official in-charge Manuel Viturro de la Torre—under the orders of then Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar—played an active role in support of the self-proclaimed Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga. While the elected president remained kidnapped, Viturro and US Ambassador Charles Shapiro were the only diplomats who met with the coup leader on April 13, 2002.
Curiously enough, Carmona, who was president of the Venezuelan employers’ association (Fedecámaras), was in Madrid in the days prior to the coup. He had been invited by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), and his agenda included a meeting with the then Foreign Minister Joseph Piqué on April 9, which was finally canceled and that hastened Carmona’s return to Caracas… two days before the coup.
Cambio 16 published at that time that, during his stay in Madrid, Carmona had contacts with members of the Spanish intelligence service of the time, the CESID.
María Corina Machado was one of the signatories of the “Act of Constitution of the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity,” also called “Carmona Decree,” which was supposed to give legal cover to a de facto coup that eliminated, at the stroke of a pen, the Constitution in force and dissolved the Supreme Court of Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, the Ombudsman’s Office, the National Electoral Council and the National Assembly.
At that time the coup leader Pedro Carmona Estanga was in charge of Química Venoso, owned by Isaac Pérez Recao, one of the main promoters of the 2002 coup, who even organized an armed group with elements of the extreme right, operationally led by Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, appointed by Carmona as head of the military during his brief term in office.
After the coup, the Recao family went into exile in Spain, where they were already doing business since 2014 through Jesús Javier Vadillo Gutiérrez, an expert in national and international tax planning, commercial law, corporate restructuring, M&A taxation and international tax planning, of the Prolaw firm.
In exile, and in business, they were accompanied by Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, with whom the Recao family shared interests in the company Alphastar Trading España SL.
The Venezuelan capital moved through companies linked to the firm Asap Corporate Services SL, the same that created Samos Servicios y Gestiones for Oleguer Pujol and Cornalata Servicios y Gestión SL, better known as Haya Real Estate SA, administered by José María Aznar Botella, who managed the interests of Lorenzo Alejandro Mendoza Giménez, Venezuelan businessman and president of Empresas Polar.
Jesús Javier Vadillo Gutiérrez also represents, in Spain, the Venezuelan Roger Swidorowicz, who was graced by Madrid Community President Isabel Díaz Ayuso with a succulent contract of 5.6 million euros for medical equipment. Gutiérrez was involved in a curious controversy due to the alleged confusion between Swidorowicz’s company Siga Dental Inc., the one that really won the contract, and another one with the same name based in Granada.
Another company in which Swidorowicz appears, in Panama, is called Inversiones ac Portafolios SA, and in its board of directors appear two other Venezuelan businessmen, César Miguel Alfonzo González and Diego Rodrigo Cordido Gasperi.
Curiously, César Miguel Alfonzo González is linked to the Recao family through another Spanish company in which Vadillo participates, Cesky Investments SL, with a capital investment of 1,264,805 euros.
Vadillo Gutiérrez is a trustee of the Pablo Horstmann Foundation, where he was accompanied by the former Minister of Justice of Aznar’s Popular Party, José María Michavila, and by Ana Fornieles Cañadas, who in 2015 was a candidate of Ciudadanos for the City Council of Alcobendas. Ana Fornieles was one of the hooligans of Alvise Pérez who participated in the hate campaign against Podemos Deputy Martina Velarde.
In 2007, Michavila, together with Shakira, Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Bosé, Juanes and a large group of Latin American musicians, founded the Foundation for Latin American Children’s Aid (ALAS). Many of these artists participated in the Venezuela Aid Live, a musical event organized in 2019 by the Venezuelan ultra-right wing, accompanied by an alleged operation to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela, which was to be forcibly pushed into Venezuela through the La Tiendita border bridge in San Antonio del Táchira and Simón Bolívar border bridge in Ureña, in the border state of Táchira, an event that concealed the umpteenth attempt to destabilize the Maduro government.
Vadillo’s exclusive list of clients includes Pedro Campos Calvo Sotelo, businessman and yachtsman, a close friend of the emeritus king of Spain and host of his escapades in Spain.
This incomplete and short tour through three of the episodes starring the Venezuelan ultra right demonstrates that it has never been a democratic option for Venezuela. This confirms how the right has taken advantage of each electoral event to instigate violence and force a change of what it calls “regime,” betting on military intervention from the US and hiring mercenaries to carry out its objectives.
It also serves to demonstrate how Spain has been a refuge for the Venezuelan extractivist-coup elite, whose trail of blood can be followed to the “Little Caracas” [Madrid neighborhood] of Recao, Capriles, López or Ledezma, to name a few.
‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ Signifies a Crossroads for the Opposition
Atlas Network, Aznar, María Corina Machado
The latest episode of the hybrid war against Venezuela began to be planned at the start of 2020. At that time, the masterminds of the perpetual coup considered the investment on Juan Guaidó as sufficiently recovered, and designated María Corina Machado as the successor of the self-proclaimed president.
Machado, who was already part of the ultra right that had created the Charter of Madrid, sponsored by Vox, received the definitive endorsement in April 2020 at a ceremony of the International Freedom Foundation, one of the neoliberal beach bars of the Atlas Network, presided by José María Aznar and Mario Vargas Llosa. The Iron Lady of the Caribbean was among the top 10 “swords” who signed the manifesto to “ensure that the pandemic does not become a pretext for authoritarianism.”
In May, a month after being appointed Guaidó’s successor, Operation Gideon was executed.
From that moment onwards, Machado became one of the regulars in the promotional events organized by the transnational libertarian foundation, accompanied by the masterminds of the strategy against communism, participating in conferences, colloquiums and other meetings that put her in the limelight and helped her to raise funds.
One of the Atlas Network platforms linked to Vente Venezuela and María Corina Machado is the Latin American Liberal Network (RELIAL). Pedro Alejandro Urruchurtu Noselli, member of the board of directors of this organization, is the coordinator of international affairs of Vente Venezuela. In 2023, he was accused of treason, criminal association, conspiracy, and money laundering for working for the interests of another country in the territorial dispute over the Essequibo between Venezuela and Guyana, a campaign financed by the oil company ExxonMobil, a US company that provides juicy capitals to the Atlas Network.
Another personality in that plot was Roberto Abdul-Hadi Casanova Gazan, president of Súmate, the NGO founded by María Corina Machado that is implicated in the publication of the fake voting receipts that endorsed the fake victory of Edmundo González Urrutia in the recently held presidential elections.
Urruchurtu is one of the opposition members taking refuge in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas.
From that manifesto, sponsored by Aznar and which designated María Corina as its leader, one can identify the ideological and financial godfathers of the plot, from among the “undersigned” of the document:
The coup-mongering former mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, coup-monger Leopoldo López and his mother Antonieta Mendoza de López form the trio that gives ideological and strategic continuity to the anointment of María Corina Machado.
Among the businessmen signing the manifesto is Rafael Alfonzo, president of the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (CEDICE), a platform belonging to the Atlas Network. Alfonzo was also the president of the Chamber of Industrialists of Caracas, CAVIDEA, and CONINDUSTRIA as well as other Venezuelan business organizations.
Another businessman signatory is Óscar García Mendoza, a Venezuelan banker suspected of financing Vente Venezuela. “From his accounts in Cayman National Bank and Trust and his financial entity in Miami, Novopayment Bank, payments go out to maintain the operations of the leader María Corina Machado, the PanAmPost portal and its employees Orlando Avendaño and Jovel Álvarez. Although Cayman National Bank and Trust does not have much publicity, it manages significant capitals such as the accounts of Empresas Polar, to pay its employees their allowances abroad,” according to a report by Últimas Noticias.
Another signatory is Marcel Granier Haydon, president of Radio Caracas Televisión, who was implicated in the 2002 coup against Chávez.
Other signatories include Guillermo Zuloaga, owner, main partner and president of Globovisión, accused of supporting the 2002 coup d’état by distorting the truth and promoting a destabilization agenda. Globovisión was one of the pioneer networks in spreading hate and disinformation campaigns in Venezuela. In 2009, it still served as a broadcasting platform for the pronouncements of the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge against the policies of the government of Hugo Chávez. There is also Carlos Zuloaga, son of Guillermo, who shares membership in the Mont Pelerin Society, with Brad Lips, executive director of Atlas Network.
We may conclude that María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia are products of the same neo-liberal laboratory from which emerged Ayuso, Cayetana Álvarez or Javier Milei, among others illuminated by the torch of freedom.
We can also confirm that the coup and dirty war strategies implemented in Latin America by this network of organizations, financed by the US State Department, have never contemplated a democratic solution to the Venezuelan “issue” but, on the contrary, have used the democratic voting processes to try to destabilize the system by denouncing continuous frauds—never proven, and whose only intention is to sow doubt, confusion and chaos with a view to perpetrate the umpteenth coup d’état.
We will continue to report as events unfold.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
