CLAP Boxes incessantly fatten Group Grand Limited Cash Register
New documents show that the Hong Kong-registered company is one of Nicolás Maduro’s favorite to do business. While there are companies in the Venezuelan private sector that wait years for the payment of foreign currencies, in 2017, this company obtained at least two contracts for the supply of over 20 million of the boxes that the Government sells at subsidized prices, and it invoiced 113 million dollars to the Ministry of Food in just one day. The papers also confirm the connection of this company with Fondo Global de Construcción (Global Construction Fund), a network built by Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Nain Saab Morán and Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, through which they obtained contracts under Hugo Chávez for the construction of prefabricated houses.
Este reportaje se encuentra disponible también en:
The
luck of the businessmen in the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro is unequal. While
large transnational or Venezuelan companies are dying, those focusing the
intermediation on the import of food for the state program of the Local Supply
and Production Committee (CLAP) bill hundreds of millions of dollars in a single
day. At least, that is the case of Group Grand Limited, a company originally
registered in Hong Kong in 2013 and later on in Mexico, connected to the
business network built by Alex Nain Saab Moran and Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas,
two Colombian entrepreneurs who have been contractors of
Chavismo.
For
the dummy company, the serious supply crisis and the hunger of the Venezuelan
people turned out to be a gold mine. In early 2017, it sold tons of food to the
Venezuelan government through the State Government of Táchira, after Nicolás
Maduro approved 340 million dollars from the National Development Fund (Fonden)
for the then governor of that entity and current Minister of Foreign Trade, José
Gregorio Vielma Mora to purchase ten million food combos. From January 8 to 30
alone, Comercializadora
de Bienes y Servicios del Estado Táchira (Cobiserta)
received at
least 212 million dollars.
That
was just the beginning of a larger business, according to new documents obtained
for this report. The contract signed between the firm of Hong Kong and
Cobiserta, represented by the then Army Colonel José Salvador Bolívar Pérez
—detained last April and investigated for possible acts of corruption, was not
the only one that Group Grand Limited achieved. Months later, the company sealed
agreement 0086-2017 with the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex),
the state-owned company that centralizes public imports, chaired by Major
General Giuseppe Yoffreda Yorio, for the supply of 11 million 500 thousand "food
combos" for the Corporation for Food and Product Services (Cuspal), attached to
the Ministry of Food. The invoices confirm the dimensions of the
business.
In
just one day, on September 29, 2017, Group Grand Limited quoted Cuspal nine
commercial invoices amounting to just over $ 113 million dollars for the sale of
canned tuna, pasta, corn flour, tomato sauce and mayonnaise, among other of the
eleven products included in the CLAP boxes that the Government sells at
subsidized prices among the poorest and that it uses as the flagship against the
alleged "economic war" by local entrepreneurs. Moving the cash register like
that in a Venezuela marked by an uninterrupted contraction for the last four
years, the paralysis of exchange control - effective since 2003 - and the
collapse of its international reserves, is an accomplishment of just a few
companies.
On September 29, 2017, Group Grand Limited invoiced Cuspal, attached to the Ministry of Food, many of the products included in the CLAP boxes for a total of 113 million dollars
For
instance, Alimentos Polar faces constant stoppages in its industrial plants
because the Venezuelan government has failed to pay 130 million dollars for the
import of raw materials for the last three years. "We have 449 applications for
Foreign Currency Clearance Authorization (ALD) awaiting response, which have an
average of 1,095 days in Cencoex. This implies that our international suppliers
have not been paid. Many of them have suspended credit lines to Venezuela for
these delays," says a recent report by the company belonging to Empresas Polar,
the largest private group in the country.
The
story of Group Grand Limited, however, is a happy one. The invoices for January
and September total 325 million dollars, but sources familiar with the CLAP
business say that the two contracts signed with the Venezuelan government exceed
600 million dollars in exchange for 21 million combos. They also affirm that
Group Grand Limited also supplies other essential products to other state
agencies. Everything has been possible without a factory, with few workers and
without fixed headquarters, at least in Caracas, and in the strictest
silence.
It
was only in last year’s August that its name became public. At that time,
Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Díaz, dismissed by the Government of Maduro,
said that the company was run by Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Saab Morán and
Álvaro Pulido Vargas on behalf of president Nicolás 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," Ortega Díaz
said to unleash a scandal.
By
that time, Armando.info had revealed several of the signs that connected
Group Grand Limited with Saab Morán and Pulido Vargas, e.g. the telephone and
the company's address in Caracas referred to the headquarters of Fondo Global de
Construcción, a company that allowed the entrepreneurs sign a millionaire
contract with the late Hugo Chávez for the construction of prefabricated houses;
the son of Alex Saab Morán, Shadi Nain Saab Morán, appeared in the incorporation
papers of the company in Hong Kong from 2015 to February 24, 2017. Then, the
accusation of Ortega Díaz, revealed
that in the company registration in Mexico,
Enmanuel Enrique Rubio González—son of Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, whose
original identity is Germán Rubio, according to the
investigations of Univisión journalist Gerardo Reyes—appeared
as attorney-in-fact.
However, the defense of the entrepreneurs denies their link with Group Grand
Limited.
Although
the children of the entrepreneurs have disappeared from the records of Group
Grand Limited in Hong Kong and Mexico, the documents obtained now provide one
more link in the connection between Group Grand Limited and Fondo Global de
Construcción, a company whose corporate structure leads to Malta and allowed
Alex Nain Saab Morán to sign an agreement with the Venezuelan Government in the
Miraflores Palace in 2011 before Hugo Chávez, his counterpart Juan Manuel
Santos, and the then Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Nicolás Maduro. In the end,
that agreement led to an investigation by the Ecuadorian
Prosecutor for various irregularities.
In
the contracts signed by Group Grand Limited with the Venezuelan state agencies
for the sale of CLAP boxes, Andreina Fuentes Mazzei acts as "legal
representative". Following the trail of this lawyer leads again to the offices
of Fondo Global de Construcción in Caracas because based on the documents from
the Mercantile Registry she is the CEO of the company since 2013 and of another
construction company that also uses the same office in the luxurious business
complex Centro Galipán, east of the Venezuelan capital.
chevron_leftDesliza la imagen para ver máschevron_right
zoom_inHaz click sobre cada imagen para ampliar
At
the close of this report, neither Fondo
Global de Construcción nor Group Grand Limited responded to the request
for comments.
What luck!
The
invoices of Group Grand Limited also show striking data, for instance, that the
Maduro government paid more in January than in September for several of the
products that the company sent from the port of Veracruz in Mexico to the port
of La Guaira in Venezuela. On January 19, 2017, Group Grand Limited charged the
Government of Táchira $ 4.75 per kilogram of "whole milk powder," but eight
months later, it sold each kilogram at $ 6.95 to Cuspal, the company attached to
the Ministry of Food, headed by Army General Luis Medina Ramírez. That invoice
of September 29 for milk powder totaled 41.7 million
dollars.
"What
a deal," exclaims a Venezuelan food industry entrepreneur when comparing both
invoices. The increase seems incomprehensible, if considering that specialized
sites in the variations of commodities report that in mid-September of 2017 the
price of "whole milk powder" was around 3 thousand dollars per ton. Today the
price is around $ 3,200, which would be $ 3.2 per kilogram. "Mexico does not
produce milk powder, let alone to export it. Those international prices are for
whole milk, but the milk in the CLAPs is not whole," adds the
industrialist.
A
chemical analysis conducted by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of
Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), at the request of Armando.info,
agrees with the industrialist and makes that increase of nearly 50% reflected in
the invoices of Group Grand Limited even more incomprehensible. This analysis
showed that the Mexican suppliers of brands like Macleche, Suprema, Kosland or
Rancho Nuevo, to name a few, lied in the nutritional information and sent to
Venezuela a product low in protein and calcium, but high in carbohydrates and
sodium, and neither own traders nor the Venezuelan authorities took notice of
that.
chevron_leftDesliza la imagen para ver máschevron_right
zoom_inHaz click sobre cada imagen para ampliar
Although
the Venezuelan Government did not publicly pronounce on this finding nor
revealed which of the ten intermediaries that it hired was responsible for the
marketing of those products, on February 21 - just three days after the
publication of the report on CLAP’s
Bad Milk
-
the president of Corpovex sent a letter to the Mexican suppliers, complaining
about the food quality. After a "Bolivarian, patriotic and revolutionary
greeting," Yoffreda Yorio recalled that "the sanitary permit and the certificate
of free sale in the country of origin of all shipped food items corresponding to
the products of the Local Committee for Supply and Production (CLAP), either in
the form of combos or loose cargo, must be submitted to the verification company
and Corpovex."
chevron_leftDesliza la imagen para ver máschevron_right
zoom_inHaz click sobre cada imagen para ampliar
On
May 14, deputy and president of the Comptroller's Office Commission of the
Venezuelan National Assembly Freddy Superlano formally filed a complaint in
Mexico to the Prosecutor General of that country to start an investigation
against the Mexican suppliers that dispatched poor-quality products from Mexico,
like the milk powder in CLAP boxes. The doubts and shadows about the business
set with the CLAP grew a few days later when the president of Colombia, Juan
Manuel Santos, reported irregularities in a batch of over 25,000 boxes with food
combos for Venezuela in the port of Cartagena. "Nearly 400 tons of food not
suitable for consumption and to be distributed by these political committees of
social control in Venezuela were seized in Cartagena. This is the tip of the
iceberg of a shameful business involving front companies in Colombia, Mexico and
many other countries," warned the president on May 17, from the Nariño
Palace.
After
the seizure, appeared the name of a Venezuelan entrepreneur, Luis Francisco
Sagarzazu, who was the owner of two companies domiciled in Cartagena and
responsible for the goods. However, the suspicion of the Colombian authorities
is that there is a larger scheme of corruption and other crimes behind. "Front
companies, money laundering companies, are being used for acts of corruption and
illegal re-export of these foods to the Government of Venezuela," summed up Juan
Carlos Buitrago, director of the Colombian Tax and Customs Police, at the press
conference offered with the Colombian president.
The
president of the Comptroller's Office Commission of the Venezuelan National
Assembly asked the Prosecutor General of Mexico to investigate the companies in
that country that have shipped poor-quality milk in CLAP boxes for
Venezuela.
There
is silence in Caracas. No spokesperson has explained why since late 2016 they
have paid millions of dollars to shell companies registered in tax havens, like
Postar
Intertrade Limited,
or Million
Rise Industries Limited,
FB
Foods LLC or Welsford Trading Corp,
among others, for the sale of around 90 million CLAP boxes that were mainly
acquired in Mexico, but also in Colombia, Panama or Brazil, in 2017 alone. From
January to May of this year alone, around 20 ships arrived loaded with food
combos as part of Maduro's electoral offer for the presidential election of May
20.
Apart
from the intermediaries, the scheme has also benefited Mexican companies like El
Sardinero, which has shipped thousands of boxes to Group Grand Limited,
Deshidratados Alimenticios e Industriales (DAI), Grupo Brandon, Rice &
Beans, La Cosmopolitana or Digrava, among others.
"CLAPs
are not a temporary measure, they are here to stay," Nicolás Maduro proclaimed
last Thursday before the questioned National Constituent Assembly (ANC) in a
swearing-in ceremony for the new term of office. It appears that the “cha-ching”
of the cash register of Group Grand Limited will
continue.