Former Venezuelan Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami being detained by security forces. Photo: Public Ministry.
Former Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami and former minister of economy and former president of the National Development Fund (FONDEN), Simón Alejandro Zerpa, have been arrested for their involvement in the PDVSA-Crypto corruption plot. A businessman, Samark José López, has also been arrested. This was reported by the attorney general of Venezuela,Tarek William Saab, at a press conference on Tuesday, April 9.
The three detainees will be charged with treason, appropriation or diversion of public funds, misuse of influence and relations, money laundering, and association to commit a crime.
Attorney General Saab explained that, out of the 54 people arrested since last year for involvement in these corruption plots, five have become witnesses cooperating with the authorities. They claimed that their lives and those of their families were in danger because they were being threatened with death by the other implicated parties. The attorney general added that there was a delay in arranging the special conditions for the protection of these witnesses so that they could provide their testimonies, which occurred only this weekend. For this reason, there was a delay in the arrests of El Aissami and the other two detainees.
Saab also highlighted the “use of financial digital technology to cover up the crime, so as not to be captured or identified,” was used to hide and cover up incriminating information. This was another cause of the delay in arresting El Aissami.
en que Tareck El Aissami es #detenido para ser #imputado por el @MinpublicoVEN por los #delitos de: Traición a la Patria, Apropiación o Distracción del Patrimonio Público, Alardeamiento o Valimiento de Relaciones o Influencias, Legitimación d Cap y Asociación. pic.twitter.com/6srTKwnChA
— Tarek William Saab (@TarekWiliamSaab) April 9, 2024
The attorney general explained that Tareck El Aissami was responsible for the assignment of crude oil cargoes to the National Superintendence of Crypto-assets (SUNACRIP) and to individuals without administrative control or guarantees, in breach of PDVSA’s contracting regulations.
Simón Zerpa, on the other hand, was linked to a criminal structure within the FONDEN and the Ministry of Commerce. He, in complicity with former Deputy Minister Johana Amorín, El Aissami’s right-hand person, took advantage of their positions to divert public funds through so-called suppliers (shell companies) that did not comply with the requirements to have a contract with the State, thus causing millions of dollars of damage to the state.
Samark López, through a digital bank, facilitated the transfers in cash, digital accounts, and cryptocurrencies to sustain the entire operation of the criminal mafia. Saab added that López was tried in the United States, where “he won the trial and that he was returned the properties that had been seized.” Saab wondered how that could have happened.
en que Samark López fue #detenido para ser #imputado por el @MinpublicoVEN por los delitos de
Apropiación o Distracción del Patrimonio Público, Alardeamiento o Valimiento de Relaciones o Influencias, Legitimación de Capitales y Asociación. pic.twitter.com/5mcQOpYMTC
— Tarek William Saab (@TarekWiliamSaab) April 9, 2024
According to the attorney general, the plan was “to destroy the economy and to collapse the country, and if it had succeeded, in 2024 the economy would have been worse than it was in 2015.”
He also explained that the accused made use of mafias in PDVSA, CVG and SUNACRIP, linked to corrupt bankers and foreign agents in the Miami-Washington axis. “As soon as the arrests took place, our sources in the United States informed us that they already knew about it,” Saab commented.
The details
Saab stated that the PDVSA-Crypto scheme carried out fraudulent operations with cryptocurrencies to obtain movable and immovable assets, which involved three key institutions: PDVSA, SUNACRIP (headed by Yoselit Ramírez, also under arrest) and the Corporación Venezolana de Guayana (CVG). Among the first arrested was Antonio Pérez Suárez, former vice-president of commerce and supply of PDVSA; Yoselit Ramírez Camacho, then president of SUNACRIP, “El Aissami’s right-hand man and executor of all these atrocities,” and former National Assembly Deputy Hugbel Roa.
Using cryptocurrencies and exchanges such as Kraken, they evaded all financial regulations of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and destabilized the national currency, strengthening the black market of foreign currency and causing damages to the Venezuelan state, stated Attorney General Tarek William Saab.
Five of the detainees decided to take the benefit of confession and became protected witnesses.
The attorney general related several confessions made by one of the protected witnesses.
This witness, a businessman who earned El Aissami’s trust by virtue of his friendship with Jesús Méndez, connected him to Hugbel Roa and Pedro Maldonado (CVG), who demanded commission payments in cash to guarantee access to business with PDVSA and CVG.
These payments were destined to El Aissami, to the election campaigns of Hugbel Roa for deputy/governor of Trujillo, and in the case of Maldonado, for the payment of a special payroll of millions of dollars.
The attorney general added that Yoselit Ramírez asked this protected witness to get a house for one of El Aissami’s escorts, for which he was paid $5 million in cash.
Yoselit Ramírez also asked the witness to lend her a penthouse that belonged to the company of that witness, because “she had just had a child.” After a while he told the witness that he was going to keep it, as a “commission for the assigned contracts.”
The attorney general further explained that after El Aissami took charge of PDVSA’s Alí Rodríguez Araque Commission, he began to manage the shipments of oil, coke and fuel oil himself. He ordered the witness to assign a company abroad, through which he would triangulate all the crude oil purchase operations of PDVSA.
The assignments of these shipments were made on a sheet of paper, where the basic data of the product was placed, and through a telephone call from El Aissami to Antonio Pérez Suárez, vice-president of trade and supply of PDVSA. The foreign company was assigned 15 vessels for an amount of $153 million. Of these, $22 million were paid in cash to Antonio Pérez Suárez in his office, where there were stacks of dollars in cash.
Saab explained that Pérez Suárez purposely delayed the loading of the product to generate unforeseen expenses to the contractors, who then sent an emissary who charged a commission to expedite the shipments.
The witness said that, for the first ship of fuel oil assigned to him, he had to pay this emissary, named Edward Coronado, $2 million in cash.
El Aissami himself asked the witness to make three transfers to a foreign account for $1.5 million. On another occasion, he had to execute civil works for $500,000, and had to give El Aissami an additional $450,000 for personal expenses.
The witness also said that Yoselit Ramírez asked him to receive in the accounts two payments for two ships assigned to SUNACRIP for $35 million, and that money was transferred to cryptocurrencies. An amount of $3 million had to be given to individuals trusted by Yoselit Ramírez.
The witness also narrated that Hugbel Roa asked him for millions of dollars several times, for the expediting services he would do, and that Roa charged him $5 million in commissions for the assignment of contracts.
Corruption in assignments of oil tankers
Saab explained that according to the witness’ account, Yoselit Ramírez and Hugbel Roa used the excuse of the sanctions to directly assigned the crude oil vessels, in order to then mobilize the proceeds from their commercialization, so as to leave no trace.
The attorney general added that they used shell companies and cryptocurrency payments at will, without allowing the BCV access to it, and controlling the access to foreign currency in the national market, which allowed them to speculate with the exchange rate market.
He pointed out that, according to the witness, “El Aissami and Pérez Suárez ended up creating a competition for the control of the funds coming from the sale of crude oil. They controlled the intermediaries and the final buyers, and at each stage they charged commissions and sold the products at prices 50% below their value. Part of their profit was invested in cryptocurrency mining farms, with the knowledge of El Aissami.”
PDVSA’s finance department was destroyed
Another witness explained that in November 2020, Pérez Suárez dismantled the Vice Presidency of Finance of PDVSA, eliminating the protocols for the payments to suppliers of the oil industry. This was done under the protection and direction of El Aissami. Third party accounts were used to divert resources that should have entered the Venezuelan State coffers.
Minimum commissions of 5% were charged for each sale of oil tankers, and an additional 3% if the payment was in cash. The assignments for the sale of Venezuelan crude oil were made, some with the knowledge of El Aissami and others of Pérez Suárez, where the sale was agreed upon for up to three quarters of the value of the product, generating losses to the State.
Invoices were delivered with inflated amounts for services rendered to PDVSA, in order to share those overprices. A special work unit was created, which made up the accounts to circumvent the audits of the Vice Presidency of Finance.
With these schemes, Pérez Suárez got hold of a fortune of billions of dollars, said Attorney General Saad.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/KW
Luigino Bracci
He is passionate about computer science since he was about 14 years old, at that age “a man gave me a small computer that he had bought in the eighties, of those that were connected to a television and had to be programmed to work (a Sinclair ZX81 ), and I really liked it.” On his political inclination, his parents were a great influence. “They were people of very humble origins, both emigrants, dissatisfied with injustice and inequality. But they were not militants of the left. I had many other influences, classmates in HS whose parents were on the left, as well as several teachers who were trained in the Pedagogical and gave us classes at a time as conflictive as it was the presidency of CAP and the military insurrection of Chávez ” He enrolled in the UCV and in 2006 he graduated in Computing, a career that he complements with popular communication in the digital field.
