Island of Barbados Hides Treasure of Samark López

A check for 8 million 500 thousand bolivars, dated September 2010, is a milestone in the business career of Samark José López Bello. The payment —equal to 1.9 or 3.2 million dollars, based on the two official exchange rates existing at that time in Venezuela— allowed López Bello, with only 36 years of age, to assume the majority shareholding of Profit Corporation C.A., an engineering company founded in the 90s. A month earlier, Armando José Salazar Gibory and Marcos Rafael Cabello Bello had acquired it, two names that will accompany Samark López in several of the companies that he surreptitiously accumulated until the US Treasury Department proclaimed him the "front man" of Tareck El Aissami, vice president of the Republic.

It was in February when the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) accused him of "providing material assistance" and "financial support" to El Aissami, whom the administration of Donald Trump links to drug trafficking. US authorities sanctioned 13 assets in up to five jurisdictions: Venezuela, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. "We have frozen assets, tens of millions of dollars in assets that will have a very big impact for El Aissami and his environment," summarized Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin.

The leak of the so-called Paradise Papers containing millions of documents from the Appleby law firm in Bermuda and commercial records of several tax havens, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), shows that the corporate structure established by Samark López is broader than that portrayed by the Treasury Department. Thus, while Venezuela began its "great depression", the entrepreneur did not stop expanding, while protecting his private treasure on the island of Barbados. "He has many other companies that did not appear in the designating," acknowledges his legal team that agreed to answer the questions for this report anonymously. "Maybe they had not detected them in the research they were doing, so they were not listed in the initial publication they made," he adds.

From the moment the news circulated, there was a sense that Samark López's assets listed by OFAC were incomplete. Almost simultaneously with the publication of the sanctions, a ship with thousands of boxes of food for the Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP) —the plan devised by Nicolás Maduro to face the general shortage that has punished the population for three years— left from the port of Veracruz, Mexico, to the port of Puerto Cabello, two hours from Caracas. The goods were shipped by Postar Intertrade Limited, an unknown company that did not appear in the organization chart of OFAC, but which Samark López presumed of on his website and whereby he sealed at the end of 2016 a contract for 120 million dollars with Corporación Venezolana de Comercio Exterior (Foreign Trade Venezuelan Corporation) (Corpovex), the state holding that centralizes imports.

For the Venezuelan authorities Postar Intertrade Limited was familiar. Before that business, Samark Lopez used it to dispatch construction materials and even Christmas trees, as well as almost 455 thousand tons of bulk food (yellow corn, white corn and wheat) to the Venezuelan government from last year’s June to December.

Initially registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2013, Postar Intertrade Limited is a company domiciled since 2016 in that peaceful corner of the Caribbean called Barbados. The leaked papers also show that the owner of the 50 thousand shares (1 dollar each) is another company called 1000 Investments Group Limited in the jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands and also related to Yakima Oil Trading LLP, another property of the Venezuelan entrepreneur, registered in the United Kingdom.

The site also states that as soon as the company changed hands, the contracts with the big Venezuelan state companies arrived. "Our main customers are Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) and its subsidiaries Pdvsa Gas and Pdvsa Petróleo," says the website. The installation of a turbogenerator in San Joaquín Plant and the works for Soto deep extraction plant, both in the state of Anzoátegui and contracted by Pdvsa Gas, are two of the eight projects that Profit Corporation achieved after the company was transferred to the hands of Samark López.

Another key step for these businesses was that in 2010, the company was enrolled in the program of Social Production Companies (EPS) of Pdvsa and its subsidiaries —an idea of ??the then president Hugo Chávez for the development of the oil industry—, as evidenced in the mercantile file of Profit Corporation.

Neither the company nor Samark López have revealed the value of the contracts signed by Profit Corporation with the Venezuelan state-owned companies, but through ImportGenius, an international trade database, it is possible to at least verify that from June 2012 to November 2017, the CIF value (includes insurance and freight) of the imports made by the company was almost 18 million dollars in industrial items like machinery and pipes, but also in toys, tableware, doors and their frames, among other goods.

If Venezuela has experienced an extended economic contraction since 2013, for Samark López the last years were of amplification, judging from the leaked documents of the Barbados trade registry. The papers show that in the last four years, the Venezuelan entrepreneur was creating his own holding on the island, business architecture like those established by big transnational corporations like Nike and Apple in tax havens, which have been uncovered with the global Paradise Papers investigation.

"It is exclusively related to tax matters, but if it were the opacity issue only, no one can really know who the shareholders of a company in Barbados are, except the people who organized it. The aim is to have a holding company like big companies in the world do, like Apple does," argue Samark López’s advisors.

However, the US authorities consider the scheme devised by the entrepreneur as distrustful. In August, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen), also attached to the Treasury Department, mentioned Samark López as a potential case in which drug trafficking, luxury real estate and cash shell companies are intermingled.

The corporate structure established by the Venezuelan entrepreneur, Yakima Trading Corp was "re-domiciled" in Barbados in 2016, like Postar Intertrade Limited. The company was born in 2002 in Panama, but it is in the hands of Samark López and his partners (José Esteban Chacín Bello and Enrique Alberto Chacín Bello) since 2012, at which time its capital went from 10 thousand dollars to 10 million dollars. Both Yakima Trading Corp and Yakima Oil Trading LLP, registered in the United Kingdom, were mentioned by OFAC last February.

Like Profit Corporation, with Yakima Trading Corp Samark López achieved business with the Venezuelan oil company. Between 2015 and 2016, that company supplied Pdvsa Industrial materials like steel coils, steel shot, welding wire and other steel materials in at least five shipments that arrived at the port of Puerto Cabello, in the state of Carabobo, center of the country. "We are a corporation with a diversity of products and brands that offers solutions to major companies in the oil, petrochemical, industrial and construction sectors, particularly in Venezuela and the region," says the company's website.

Yakima Oil Trading LLP is controlled, in turn, by two other companies, the final beneficiary of which is Samark López, 2000 Investment Group Ltd, registered in Nevis, and YPP Offshore Holdings Corp, registered in Barbados. The company was registered on the island on November 19, 2015, and the names of Armando José Salazar Gibory and Marcos Rafael Cabello Bello, the two who have accompanied Samark López since 2010 in Profit Corporation, appeared again in the board. "No share in the capital of the company will be transferred without the approval of the directors of the company or a committee of said directors, evidenced by resolution," says one of the documents.

Also in November 19, 2015, Samark López and the two partners created companies with similar names in Barbados, namely, YPP Latam Holdings Corp and YPP Us Holdings Corp, both aimed at "holding shares of a Venezuelan company." The legal team ensures that the objective of the companies under the name of YPP was to act as "holdings to hold the shares of operating companies".

In addition to this network, there are at least two other companies, October Ventures Ltd, registered on October 17, 2014, and Food Trading Group Corp, registered on March 13, 2015. In the first, Armando José Salazar Gibory and Marcos Rafael Cabello Bello reappear as directors, while in the second, these positions are held by José Esteban Chacín Bello and Enrique Alberto Chacín Bello. According to the attorneys of Samark López, neither of these companies specified the businesses for which they were created. It is also not clear if at any time these two and the rest of the companies in Barbados will be able to carry out any activity. By not being listed by OFAC they can work, as long as they do not make transactions in dollars or use the US financial system. However, the brisk expansion of Samark López seems to have slowed down. 

The accusation of the Treasury Department has knocked down or, at least, paralyzed the plans of the entrepreneur. He has personally acknowledged that after the accusation of the US authorities, the business of Postar Intertrade Limited with Corpovex for the supply of food for the Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP) was suspended and that he has put all his businesses on "stand by", something that his lawyers repeat. "Right now, none of the companies are formally active, none are operating. They are on standby until the issue of the sanctions is resolved." The administration of Donald Trump has the last word.