CITGO's former executives, sentenced to prison terms for financial wrongdoing. File photo.
The ninth circuit of the Caracas Court of Appeals upheld this Friday, February 4, the ruling of the Court of First Instance of Caracas that sentenced six former executives of Venezuela’s CITGO Corporation, a subsidiary of state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), to prison terms between nine and 13 years, for acts of corruption.
Friday’s ruling ratified the sentence against former president of CITGO, José Ángel Pereira Ruimwyk, to serve 13 years and seven months in prison for committing crimes of fraudulent embezzlement and illicit agreement of a public official with a contractor, according to a press release of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).
RELATED CONTENT: Venezuela Rejects US Decision Against Oil Industry (CITGO Six)
The Appeals Court also declared Pereira Ruimwyk guilty of association to commit a crime. In addition to the prison sentence, he has also been slapped with a fine of $2 million, equivalent to 40% of the value of the property that was the object of the crime.
The ruling further confirmed the decision of the trial court that sentenced former executives Tomeu Vadell Recalde, Jorge Toledo Kohury, Gustavo Cárdenas, José Zambrano Colina and Alirio Zambrano Colina to serve eight years and ten months in prison “for the commission of the crimes of illicit agreement of a public official with a contractor, and association to commit a crime.”
The former CITGO executives were arrested in November 2017 and sentenced in 2020 by a Caracas Trial Court.
The CITGO six, who are accused of signing contracts that compromised CITGO’s assets, have served part of their sentence in prison, and in April 2021 were allowed house arrest. However, in October 2021, they were transferred back to jail a few hours after the United States government illegally extracted from Cape Verde the Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab. Some local media have also speculated about possible plans of the CITGO six to flee as the cause for their return to prison.
For reasons that are not yet well explained, these six Venezuelan oil executives who had lived for several years in the US and had applied for US citizenship are being heavily monitored by US top officials, from Trump’s to Biden’s administration. US official sources have repeatedly referred to the US citizenship of the six, but in reality they are Venezuelans who, while working for the Venezuelan government in the United States, were naturalized as US citizens. These six former executives carried out a financial deal not authorized by Caracas and almost jeopardized Venezuelan control over this multi-billion dollar Venezuelan asset currently kept seized by the US government.
Featured image: CITGO’s former executives, sentenced to prison terms for financial wrongdoing. File photo.
(Últimas Noticias) by Robert Araujo, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
