CLAPs Are a "Franchise" and They Already Have an Owner
An unknown company called Salva Foods 2015 —created months before Nicolás Maduro put out his idea of establishing a network of stores for the state program of the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP)—is the current beneficiary of that business. They are called CLAP Stores and are mistaken for a state-owned company, with food outlets where there were once the premises of Abastos Bicentenarios (state-owned supermarkets). Behind that operation, the shadow of Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Nain Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas reappears, both linked since early 2017 to the CLAPs due to a dummy company registered in Hong Kong.
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Upon
entering, the deception is confirmed. The color green replaces the revolutionary
red and, despite the name, it is not a public company. The high prices and the
scarce variety replicate the scene of any supermarket in a Venezuela submerged
in hyperinflation and shortages. But it is not any supermarket or any
chavista government premises. Behind the so-called CLAP Stores, the
supply network for the state program of the Local Supply and Production
Committees (CLAP), the shadow of Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Nain Saab Morán
and Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, who are among the largest private food
importers for government programs, reappears.
Through
an unknown company called Salva Foods 2015, they control what looks like a
franchise of the state plan to "privatize" public food retail chains, like
Abastos Bicentenario, partly built on the frame of the business in Venezuela
known as Alamacenes Éxito. Salva Foods joins the dummy company Group Grand
Limited, registered in
Hong Kong, whereby the entrepreneurial duo became a supplier of millions of CLAP
boxes since early 2017, thanks
to two contracts signed with the Government of Nicolás Maduro, and is also a
supplier of medicines from
India because of another contract signed with the Ministry of
Health.
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The
formula for taking over this other link of the business is repeated. Neither
Saab Morán nor Pulido Vargas has shares in Salva Foods, but several hints lead
to them. It is a business network with many pieces, put together like a
puzzle.
To
verify that Salva Foods is the owner of the CLAP Stores, it is enough to buy in
one of the nine branches in Caracas. In addition to the name of the company, an
address appears on the invoices, which was the same that appears on its first
Tax Information Registry (RIF). First, it seems to lead to any office in Centro
Banaven, colloquially known as Cubo Negro (Black Cube), a business complex
southeast of the Venezuelan capital. But it is not any office, it is the same
address published on the website -currently inactive- of Group
Grand Limited, after Armando.info discovered that this company
initially had the same headquarters as Fondo Global de Construcción, another
company that let Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas become Chavismo contractors
in 2011.
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However,
the address is incorrect. At least that is what they say at the Banaven Center.
They deny that they once hosted Group Grand Limited or Salva Foods. The office
of Salva Food is actually and finally in Centro Altamira, another office tower
in the northeast of Caracas.
Error
or not, the Banaven Center will not be the only coincidence between the two
companies. The calls made to the telephone number on the invoices issued by
Group Grand Limited to the Venezuelan Government for the millions of food combos
from Mexico are answered by Carlos Rolando Lizcano Manrique, an entrepreneur
born in Cúcuta (Department of Norte de Santander, northwestern Colombia), of 47
years of age, and owner of Salva Foods.
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Multiple Connections
Carlos
Rolando Lizcano Manrique also has companies in Colombia and Panama. A
year ago, in a brief telephone conversation, he denied that Group Grand Limited
was related to Alex Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas, and merely stated that
it was a Hong Kong company. However, the papers of the commercial registry of
that jurisdiction revealed that Shadi Nain Saab Certain, son of Alex Saab Morán,
was a beneficiary of the company from 2015 until February 24, 2017.
Subsequently, Armando.info discovered that the attorney-in-fact of the company before the Government of Maduro is
Andreina Fuentes Mazzei, who is also a director of Fondo Global de
Construcción, and that a son of Álvaro Pulido Vargas was
attorney-in-fact of a branch of
Group Grand Limited, created in Mexico.
Thus,
Carlos Rolando Lizcano Manrique answering the telephone of Group Grand Limited
does not seem a matter of chance. There is also another coincidence. Its Tax
Information Registry (RIF) has the same address as the RIF of the company
registered in Hong Kong, which is the one reported in some cargo manifests.
Being the main suppliers of CLAP boxes with contracts for the Government of the
State of Táchira and the Ministry of Food for around 700 million dollars was not
enough. Another piece of the plot was missing.
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Carlos
Rolando Lizcano Manrique is the owner of Salva Foods, the owner of the franchise
for CLAP Stores. On August 3, 2017, he assumed 100% of the shares, valued at
2,000 million bolivars. He had initially registered the company with José
Rolando Higuera Lizcano with a capital of 500,000 bolivars, on June 23, 2016,
seven months before Maduro made his idea public. "We will transform Mercal,
Pdval, (Abastos) Bicentenario and all our system in a CLAP store system (...) I
urge all sectors willing to continue working in Venezuela to join this new
dynamic," he said in January 2017 during his Activity Report before the Supreme
Court of Justice (TSJ).
The
President’s decision against Abastos Bicentenario, a chain that emerged from the expropriation decreed by Hugo Chávez
of the assets of the French Grupo Casino and for which the Republic paid 690
million dollars, came a year earlier. "Abastos Bicentenario is
rotten. I say so and order a total and absolute restructuring and the change of
Abastos Bicentenario into direct distribution centers of communal markets, and
communities in the hands of communes and communal councils," proclaimed Maduro
in February 2016. "I assume full responsibility," he insisted. Four months
later, Salva Foods was born and that seems to have been enough to change the
destiny of Abastos Bicentenario.
Although
a decree signed by Rafael Campos Cabello - cousin of the number two of
chavismo, Diosdado Cabello, and acting president since June 1, 2017 of
Abastos Bicentenario – to “create the bidding committee for the sale and
exchange of public goods of Red de Abastos Bicentenario S.A. (Rabsa)" was
published in the Official Gazette
in November 9, 2017, in the Shareholders’ Meeting of Salva Foods held on August
3, 2017, up to ten branches in Gran Caracas (Capital District and the states of
Vargas and Miranda), where the CLAP Store marquee would be placed, were listed.
Some of these premises belonged to Abastos Bicentenario, like the one in
Mohedano building of the Parque Central complex, in the center of the Venezuelan
capital.
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The
reason why these establishments passed into the hands of Salva Foods when the
decree of liquidation had not yet been published is not clear even to the
workers of Abastos Bicentenario, who after two years of agony and misinformation
now foresee massive layoffs. "The committees (CLAP) acquired through a franchise
the branches of (Abastos) Bicentenario in Macaracuay, Tamanaco and Guarenas, and
instead of absorbing the payroll, they dismissed the employees," reported
Jonathan Yulden, member of the union, as published on July 27 by the newspaper
La Verdad of the State of Vargas –coastal neighbor north of Caracas.
That
same day, union representatives of Abastos Bicentenario met with authorities of
the Ministry of Labor and confirmed the news. "We were informed that the Abastos
Bicentenario network was sold to a private company. All the stores without
exception are sold. They will dismiss everyone," summarized one of the attendees
to the meeting in an audio that circulated on Whatsapp. "The State could not
deal with the Abastos Bicentenario network and gave it to the private network.
It was sold to the private network," he concluded. This week, the workers
protested again in Caracas. Salva Foods barely has an "average annual payroll"
of three workers according to the National Registry of Contractors
(RNC).
Neither
Carlos Rolando Lizcano Manrique, nor the general manager of Salva Foods, Betsy
Desiree Mata Pereda, answered to the interview request for this report. Mata
Pereda, a 37-year-old Venezuelan, is also related to other companies that are,
in turn, linked with Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas, whom the dismissed prosecutor
Luisa Ortega Díaz accused in August 2017 of managing Group Grand Limited on
behalf of Maduro. "We have conducted an investigation on the CLAP food bags
delivered in Venezuela by a company registered in Mexico under the name of two
people. The company is Group Grand Limited and presumably belongs to the
president of the Republic."
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Profitable Ambiguity
At
the beginning of the year, the leftist portal Aporrea.org gathered some
opinions on what was to come. "The reality hit them in the face when employees
and managers of that company (Salva Foods) let them know that they had nothing
to do with the Venezuelan State and that the new establishment belonged to a new
Colombian consortium." The story opened some questions. "Under what negotiation
was the name of CLAP sold to the new owners of these establishments? What were
the terms? Why was this negotiation done behind people's back and without giving
any kind of information? Is it the privatization of all state companies being
considered? "
The
questions remain unanswered and Maduro insists on his idea. "We have to
articulate the system. We must articulate it in practice, the extended CLAP, the
fairs of the sovereign field, the alliance with the private sector, the CLAP
stores and all the municipal market systems that are at the service of the
supply and satisfaction of our people," he said last
April.
Consumers
have another perception. They go looking for subsidized products, but they do
not even get one with a price close to the 25,000 bolivars that the CLAP box
costs with 11 items. In late June, in the branches of Los Símbolos and San
Bernardino -both in Caracas but not included in the Salva Foods list, one kilo
of Torondoy milk powder costs 4.2 million bolivars, almost the integral salary
of a worker. The marked price of Margarine and mayonnaise was 2.2 million
bolivars, while a can of sardine, one of the cheapest items, reached 385,000
bolivars. "Please, check the premises where Abastos Bicentenario used to be in
San Bernardino. Now it is a CLAP Store but it is actually a private company
called Salva Foods 2015 C.A. and, evidently, they change prices every day," a
user complained on June 26 via Twitter with Freddy Bernal, the national head of
CLAPs. A month later, another consumer complained on the same social media to
the president of the Republic. "The CLAP stores do not exist. They are from a
Colombian chain that sets the price it wants."
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As
in other private networks, the CLAP Stores try to disguise shortages. It is
common to see shelves full of a single product in endless rows, as a formula to
fill spaces that otherwise would be empty. Some of these items have the stamp of
Empresas Polar, the largest private conglomerate in the country, but often
demonized by Chavismo spokespersons. In other establishments it is more
difficult to disguise the situation and there are spaces disabled or closed for
the public awaiting merchandise.
"In
Salva Foods we import products to improve your quality of life," summarizes the
company on its website despite the fact that in Venezuela, importation is almost
impossible due to the strict exchange control in force since 2003, which has
caused the abandonment of several transnational companies in the last years. But
that is the only description it offers concerning its
activities.
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Records
of Importgenius, international trade database, prove that
the company has purchased in Mexico and Colombia products for CLAPs from
suppliers like Grupo Brandon, Rice & Beans or Almacenes Vaca. Even Group
Grand Limited and other
intermediaries hired by the Venezuelan Government for the importation of
merchandise have resorted to them. Sources consulted believe that
Salva Foods sells this merchandise to the Government, also acting as
intermediary. Another proof that Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas managed to put
together a business framework to achieve a full participation in what Maduro
says is a "salvation", but for them it is strictly
business.
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