Trump Diverted $600 Million Stolen From Venezuelans for the Wall with Mexico

Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond
From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas
The President of the United State, Donald Trump, would have used, according to data from that country’s Congress, more than 600 million dollars stolen from Venezuela to execute the works of the xenophobic border wall placed on the border with Mexico.
In an article written by David Adams from Univision, he notes that the Trump government “has seized” – not to say stolen – “hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts, luxury homes, cars and yachts of — allegedly — corrupt Venezuelan officials and their intermediaries in the United States. But none of that money has been returned to the Venezuelan people.”
In this regard, the Argentine right wing journalist based in Miami, Andrés Oppenheimer, w rote an opinion piece on the subject, where he details that the news of the use of these resources stolen from Venezuelans, is an important news that went under the radar in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
https://twitter.com/RepShalala/status/1273610958188032001
“Here is a story that went almost unnoticed amid the Covid-19 pandemic and racial protests in the United States, but it deserves attention: it points out that President Donald Trump would have used funds seized from the Venezuelan ‘dictatorship’ to pay for his useless border wall.”
Lawyers for the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, who is recognized by the United States as the legitimate president of Venezuela, have requested that the money be turned over to the interim government of Guaidó to be distributed — under US supervision — among Venezuelans. suffering the humanitarian crisis in the country cause by the same US sanctions.
The seized assets are being held by the Justice Department and the Treasury Department’s Confiscation Fund. And, according to congressional records and court documents, about $601 million from the Treasury Confiscation Fund has been used to build the Trump border wall, “Oppenheimer describes in his article published in The New Herald and the Miami Herald.
“When I asked about the article, the ambassador of the interim government of Guaidó in the United States, Carlos Vecchio, told me that both he and the attorney general of the Guaidó government, José Ignacio Hernández, have officially requested the Trump government to assign them those funds to help Venezuelans during the coronavirus pandemic, and for the more than 5 million Venezuelan refugees,” says the Argentine journalist not blinking by this revelation showing the submission of Guaido and his cronies to US decisions.
Oppenheimer added that Vecchio — fake ambassador of Venezuela and member of the seditious group Voluntad Popular, which has been in charge of stealing the resources and keeping the assets of the CITGO refinery, a subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in the US, valued at more of 60,000 million dollars — said he did not know if that money had been spent on the wall. Meaning the US regime is playing with Venezuelan money and even the Venezuelan accomplices in this regime change operation do not know where the money is.
“I don’t know if the money was used for the border wall or not,” Vecchio told me. “What I know is that we are doing everything possible so that this money goes to a fund and is transparently delivered to the Venezuelan people,” Oppenheimer also said, forgeting to mention the countless curruption scandals that the Venezuelan opposition has been involved in with the crumbs the US allows them.
Vecchio added that “he hopes to sign an agreement with the Trump government this year to create that fund”, this despite the fact that Venezuela, under the false mandate of Juan Guaidó, was supposed to have control of these resources since January 2019, a confession that debunks that the resources of the Venezuelan state frozen and kidnapped abroad are being “protected” to “protect them from the so called Maduro’s dictatorship” and to give them to Venezuelans.
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According to the US Department of Justice, Oppenheimer explains, the United States government has at least $450 million in Venezuelan assets “linked to corruption.” Much of that money was seized in South Florida. Oppenheimer forgets to mention hundreds of millions seized in official bank accounts, the looting of Citgo and many other looting schemes designed by the White House to rob the resources of all Venezuelans.
“Senator Bob Menéndez (from New Jersey), who sponsored the VERDAD act, allegedly secured the delivery of these funds to a future democratic government of Venezuela, pointed out to me in an email that ‘instead of using these funds to support Venezuelans who desperately need humanitarian aid or the future reconstruction of Venezuela, I am dismayed to know that the Trump administration may be wasting them on President Trump’s embarrassing border wall.”
Oppenheimer adds in his article that “it is time for Trump to give a detailed explanation on whether that money has been used to pay for part of the border wall. As we have said many times, the Trump wall is an incredibly expensive project that does little good.”
The Argentine journalist adds that “the most important thing” for Venezuela “is that Trump should accelerate the creation of a legal mechanism to release these funds” and comments that the US government “has contributed very little” to help Venezuelans with resources, if compared to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and other contries, according to the journalist.
It is time for Trump to be more generous with the victims of the “Venezuelan dictatorship”. And the money is there!” closes the opinion piece by Oppenheimer, who is not exactly an advocate of the Venezuelan government, but has historically been a promoter of the campaigns of lies created in the US to discredit Venezuela since the Hugo Chavez presidency and thus sustaining the continuous attack against ordinary Venezuelans.
Since January 2019, the US has used the facade of Juan Guaidó and the creation of a false parallel state in Venezuela governed by this fugitive from Venezuelan justice, along with a retinue of accomplices such as Carlos Vecchio, Julio Borges, David Smolansky, José Ignacio Hernández, among others, to steal Venezuela’s resources abroad, tighten the total blockade against the population, sabotage the Venezuelan oil industry, in order to try to suffocate the people and generate a social implosion that has had no effect and that with the passing of time has left in evidence only the vile theft of billions of dollars that have caused an exacerbation of the deficiencies in the quality of life of Venezuelans.
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