Haiman El Troudi Has no One to Investigate Him
The judicial authorities of Switzerland found a connection between the wife and the mother-in-law of the former Venezuelan minister with at least 40 million dollars deposited in eight bank accounts, one of which was shared with one of the main negotiators of bribes and kickbacks between Odebrecht and the governments of Chávez and Maduro. Although they asked the Venezuelan justice to investigate the matter, the courts denied any possibility of addressing the case and the Venezuelan Prosecutor's Office, led by Tarek William Saab, acts as if not aware.
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The
former Minister of Land Transport and Public Works, Haiman El Troudi, was not
even investigated. They passed him by. The Bolivarian justice has just held his
family harmless, despite the fact that alarms went off last year in Switzerland,
when the names of his wife and his mother-in-law appeared in a tangle of bank
accounts that received suspicious business transfers from offshore companies
linked to Odebrecht.
Judge
Luis Argenis Marcano Sarabia —in charge of the Eleventh Court of First Instance
in Regulatory Matters of Caracas— held them harmless through a ruling that
ignores the investigations in Switzerland that found the Venezuelan women María
Baptista and Elita Zacarías -wife and mother-in-law of the official - as
holders, beneficiaries or, at least, with authorized signature in eight bank
accounts that total more than 40 million dollars.
Haiman El Troudi, Former Minister of Land Transport and Public Works.
"Any
measure that has been requested or executed to the detriment of Elita del Valle
Zacarías Díaz and María Eugenia Baptista Zacarías, holders of identity card No.
V-3.713.952 and V-13.801.638, respectively, regardless of the judicial control
provided for in the Law, is void, irreversible, and consequently, must be
revoked." This was resolved by the judge at year-end, on December 13, 2017, in a
decision that has just been known now after he waited over three months to
notify it to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The
judge dismissed the case on his own initiative, without any prosecutor
requesting it, even though on the 15th floor of Centro Villasmil in the
Candelaria parish of Caracas, in the offices of the 55th National Prosecutor's
Office, there is a file of documents sent from Switzerland, which include the
names of the wife and the mother-in-law of the former minister in 8 out of 12
bank accounts that the prosecutor's office in that country links to Odebrecht
and the other construction companies that were part of the bribes and
commissions of the Lava Jato plot.
In
addition to the accounts in the name of the wife and the mother-in-law of El
Troudi, the Swiss prosecutor's office managed to document at least one case in
which the money came from offshore companies that the Brazilian company used to
pay bribes. "It has been possible to reconstruct a link, at least in the case of
certain payments, between the aforementioned name code and the Metro
Guarenas-Guatire project in Venezuela," Attorney General of Switzerland
Francesca Ghilardi said in a document endorsed with an Apostille that she sent
last year to Venezuela, to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic
through its embassy in Caracas. "Once the money was in the account of Alfa
International SA, it was substantially transferred to accounts in the name of
Elita del Valle Zacarías Díaz and María Eugenia Baptista Zacarías in Switzerland
and abroad."
If
it is already difficult for a Venezuelan official to justify tens of millions in
times of exchange control, in the city of Lugano the authorities warned of a
transfer of 16.3 million Swiss francs from Cresswell Overseas Ltd - one of the
proven facades of Odebrecht- to bank accounts of the relatives of El Troudi,
with a scale in account number 0251-1499613 that Credit Suisse says is in the
name of a firm called Alfa International SA, which also includes the wife and
the mother-in-law of El Troudi, together with three other Venezuelans, Alejandra
Urdaneta Tovar, Jorge Lander and no more and no less than Luis Enrique Delgado
Contreras himself. This name came up in the trials of Brazil on the Lava Jato
plot, as one of the commission agents who managed bribes and kickbacks in the
Caracas Metro.
The Messenger of Millions
Delgado
was a kind of Trojan horse that Odebrecht found in Caracas to streamline
payments within the Venezuelan government and even to leak information and
documents that would later work in its benefit. Not in vain, between 2011 and
2015, he received and channeled 100 million dollars in commissions, according to
the testimony of the Superintendent Director that the construction company had
in Venezuela, Euzenando Azevedo, who currently maintains a low profile in the
city of Sao Paulo after becoming the key witness of the Odebrecht plot in
Venezuela.
"On
several occasions, Luis Delgado brought us draft copies of confidential
documents (approval of resources for works, contractual additives, internal
studies, evaluations on price adjustments due to inflation) of these clients,
giving us the opportunity to change," said Azevedo in Brazil to the prosecutors
of the case in December 2016, in exchange for procedural
benefits.
In
2012, Odebrecht even forged through Delgado an Action Memorandum sent to
President Hugo Chávez, to multiply the amounts agreed upon in the initial
budget. "I remember that in 2012, we worked together with Luis Delgado on a
document approving resources for works (called "Action Memorandum "), entitled
Menu of Strategic Decisions, containing all the necessary works to be done in
the framework of the works of Metro de Caracas and Metro de Los Teques companies
and worked as a general authorization of the President of the Republic for these
clients to sign contractual additives with the Company for a value equal to US $
12 billion," revealed Azevedo. "This document, although technically speaking, it
should have been an internal document prepared by the Ministry of Transport, was
a document that the company had the possibility to change practically in its
entirety and that was approved exactly as requested to Luis
Delgado."
Odebrecht Caracas
Official Silence
None
of these facts has been investigated in Venezuela. If the case of the relatives
of El Troudi did not go beyond a regulatory court, the public prosecutor general
appointed by the Constituent, Tarek William Saab, has not even referred to that
matter.
In
addition to being Minister of Land Transport and President of Metro de Caracas
and Los Teques, El Troudi has passed by the Chavista administration as Minister
of Planning and Development, representative of the government before
multilateral organizations like the World Bank, the Inter-American Development
Bank and, specially, as director of President Chávez's
office.
He
led a series of alterations to El Valle-Coche highway in Caracas, which
generated criticism and rejection after causing the overflow of the Guaire
River. In his Twitter account, he still presents himself as a deputy for the
state of Miranda, although he has not even been seen in the Assembly. Today, one
can hear more about him in Switzerland than for the investigations by the Public
Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutors of that country emphasize that his wife
-the same who transfers dollars abroad- "was for a certain period the director
of Metro de Caracas."
Not
in vain, Saab was already elusive with Odebrecht when he was at the head of the
Prosecutor’s Office. "We will not work based on speculations," he replied in
last year’s September when asked about the testimonies and evidence from Brazil
that involved president Nicolás Maduro. "It is absurd", "immoral" and "null," he
added last month when the magistrates of the so-called Supreme Court of Justice
in exile approved a preliminary judgment to prosecute Maduro for his role in the
Odebrecht plot.
Saab
neither responded to a question sent by Armando.info through his press officer
about the reasons for the dismissal of the case opened against the relatives of
El Troudi.
Tarek William Saab
As
if it were the plague, Chavism seldom
refers to the matter, even though Odebrecht did not even finish more than half
of its works in Venezuela. Former Minister Haiman El Troudi barely claimed that
it was "a dirty trick" when prosecutor Pedro Lopera summoned his wife and
mother-in-law as accused in last year’s July, after receiving evidence from
Switzerland.
But
the Bolivarian justice soon released El Troudi from all responsibility or
suspicion while prosecutor Lopera is paying today that indiscreet summons with
the exile, after having been accused of corruption by Diosdado Cabello in his
program “Con el mazo dando”.
