Former PDVSA executives Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos smiling and raising their fists while showing the judicial notification granting them full freedom. Photo: Social media.
Two former executives of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos, have been granted full freedom and the house arrest order against them has been lifted.
In February 2021, the two PDVSA executives were sentenced to five years in prison, for the crime of “disclosure, reservation or supply of information,” after they had reported about financial crimes in PDVSA that were very similar to those unveiled recently, although those complaints involved some other top executives. The Venezuelan judiciary finally granted Torrealba and Chirinos full freedom, something for which the Chavista movement had fought and waited since the time of the arrests.
On Saturday, April 1, the photos of the notification by The Fifteenth Court of First Instance of the Criminal Circuit of the Metropolitan Area, showing “criminal responsibility for serving a sentence is declared non-existent in accordance with the provisions of article 471 of the Organic Code for Criminal Procedure,” began circulating on social media platforms.
Initially Torrealba and Chirinos did not release any statement, although an image of the two executives, showing the judicial notifications, smiling and raising their fists, was also making the rounds on the social media. The two young PDVSA employees had been in house arrest since February 2021.
Emotiva celebración de Alfredo Chirinos y Aryenis Torrealba, jóvenes ex gerentes de operaciones de PDVSA, tras recibir las notificaciones donde el TSJ sentencia Extinta la Responsabilidad Penal y Libertad Plena para ambos.
¡Felicidades!#1Abr pic.twitter.com/T1Limir46U
— ✽ Orlenys Ortiz 🍁🍃 (@OrlenysOV) April 1, 2023
Later on Saturday Chirinos and Torrealba released a video showing their joyous faces and thanking all the social movements, relatives, friends and international organizations for their support and inviting them to celebrate the victory. “This is a victory and a struggle but the final victory is yet to be achieved,” Alfredo Chirinos said in the video.
Family and friends
When the criminal investigation against these two professionals started in February 2021, family and friends wrote a letter that said: “We tell the President that truth is essentially revolutionary, and it is with us. We are completely sure that in the meeting to which Attorney General Tarek William Saab has invited us, we will be able to prove the innocence of Aryenis and Alfredo.”
Former PDVSA Managers Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos Placed Under House Arrest
The Committee for the Freedom of Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos issued a statement in February this year, after the completion of two years of the pair’s house arrest, detailiting how it affected their daily life.
“It did not take long for popular solidarity, family members, friends, social activists, community members, students, peasants, oil sector workers and all those who knew them or who were already aware of this type of practices, to realize that these two young people are innocent.”
Mixed signals
After the unveiling of the latest PDVSA corruption scandal leading to the resignation of Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, Chavista circles and the Committee for the Freedom of Aryenis Torrealba and Alfredo Chirinos began to raise their voices against the unfair legal procedure that ended up sentencing the two young workers for allegedly releasing sensitive information after they had filed complaints about internal corruption in PDVSA and incarcerating them for doing something that anyone with any knowledge of corruption should do. In that trial, the judges had used as main evidence an “adulterated” internal memo allegedly signed by the two former PDVSA executives who did not have the authority to sign the memo. This was stated by one of the lawyers of the two employees, during an interview with Unión Radio this week.
This case created frictions between the government’s call to denounce corruption and the reality faced by some whistleblowers who sometimes end-up being the victims of real corrupted people with the power to twist the truth and the judiciary. However, the liberation of Torrealba and Chirinos proves that the top Chavista leadership is aware of this reality and that they are willing to fix these issues.
Many analysts expect that this move marks just the beginning of a reparation for the damage caused to these former PDVSA workers, in addition to an extensive investigation to find those in the Public Ministry and the judiciary who favored corruption and damaged the personal and professional lives of two workers.
(RedRadioVE) by Victoria Torres, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
