Accomplices to Bribes to Peruvian President Toledo Left Traces in Venezuela
Two entrepreneurs from Peru, Yosef Maiman and Sabih Saylan, participated as intermediaries in the irregular payments of Odebrecht, through offshore structures, to the former president of that country. They are part of a "shell companies" structure built by Mossack Fonseca, as shareholders of the private cable TV and telephone operator in Venezuela, Inter. Even the Panamanian law firm suspected that it was being used for money laundry. Meanwhile, another firm of the group contracted works with the Chavista State.
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At
the end of the government of Alejandro Toledo (July 2001 - July 2006) in Peru,
his difficult relationship with the then Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez, reached
the most critical point. In May 2006, Toledo would eventually withdraw his
ambassador in Caracas due to, as he said, a "persistent and flagrant
interference" by Chávez in internal affairs.
Despite
the diplomatic rift, and maybe without the presidents in Lima and Caracas and
even the entrepreneurs themselves being aware of this, a business group
continued being an interconnection channel between Toledo and
Chávez.
key
names of the group were those of Peruvian-Israeli entrepreneur Yosef Maiman and
his right-hand man and compatriot, Sabih Saylan.
In
June 2006, President Alejandro Toledo, as then established by the Peruvian
justice, began receiving million dollar payments from the Brazilian construction
company Odebrecht, through the bank accounts of three offshore companies
controlled by Yosef Maiman.
Meanwhile
in Venezuela, Sabih Saylan ?like Maiman, also investigated and charged in Peru
for his role as an intermediary in the case of Odebrecht's bribes?was the
administrator of the Merhav Group subsidiary. This conglomerate of companies
specializing in the development of large-scale infrastructure projects was
founded by Maiman in 1975, in Israel, and at age 72, he is still the president
and director thereof. Merhav had been assigned the execution of several projects
of the Venezuelan Government.
But
that was not the only connection of the group ?that was an accomplice in Peru,
as an intermediary, of the payments for which today former President Toledo is a
fugitive from justice? with Venezuela.
They
already had businesses in the Caribbean country, which they shared with the
executives of one of the most important cable TV and telephone operators,
Intercable (currently, Inter).
These
businesses left no visible trace, saved for, ironically, the hermetic discretion
of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
On
February 10, 2017, as is now known due to the leak of the so-called Panama
Papers?originally received by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper of Munich and
coordinated as a journalistic project by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of Washington DC?, a Suspicious Activity Report
(SAR), intended for authorities against money laundering of the British Virgin
Islands, circulated through the internal mail of Mossack Fonseca and triggered,
undoubtedly late, the alarms inside the branch of the law firm in Tortola,
capital of the archipelago and one of the most impenetrable tax havens in the
world.
The
memorandum warned about the activities of a group of offshore companies: Vision
Investments Equities INC., Caribbean Pressing LTD., Latin American Group
Investments INC., New Age Communications INC. and CIT Management Corp. It also
mentioned the shareholders and beneficiary owners of the companies, Alberto Imar
and Eduardo Stigol, both Argentinian, former director and president of Inter
Venezuela, respectively; Leo Malamud, Maria Luisa Watson and, unsurprisingly,
the aforesaid accomplices of President Toledo, Yosef Maiman and Sabih
Saylan.
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Particularly
them - the report assured – were suspected of money
laundering.
"They
are allegedly involved with the Brazilian construction giant, Odebrecht S.A.,
and its petrochemical subsidiary, Braskem S.A.," warned the document, which was
sent to the direction of the Financial Investigation Agency in the British
Virgin Islands.
(Late)
Money Laundering Alert
It
was not the first time that the law firm's compliance officers took notice of
this group of investors. In the first quarter of 2016, they learned firsthand of
an email exchange with one of the protagonists, the Argentinean Alberto Imar;
the "nightmare" they were experiencing as a result of the investigations on
billionaire Maiman, the head of the group, and Saylan for money laundering,
within the framework of the so-called Ecoteva Case; the criminal process in
which they were involved with their friend, former president Toledo, and his
family.

"We
are a business group with over 20 years of honest history, and we never imagined
this nightmare," acknowledged Imar, who led the communications of Inter
companies with the firm, in an email sent to the Compliance Department of MF, on
March 7, 2016.
What
could have changed from the date of that confidence that the executives of
Mossack Fonseca received with understanding to early 2017, when the law firm
decides to report the distressed entrepreneurs?
Simple,
Braskem, the petrochemical arm of Odebrecht and the largest company in the
sector in Latin America, had just pleaded guilty in a Federal District Court in
Brooklyn - one of the five counties of New York City - to conspiring to violate
a Bribery law abroad. On December 21, 2016 Odebrecht agreed with US Department
of Justice agents to pay a fine of $ 3,500 million - the largest ever required
for a case of bribes abroad - to settle international charges that included
payments to Brazil's state oil company and politicians, including former
president Toledo.
Mossack
Fonseca feared being dragged into this litigation in the United States of
America.
"We
noticed that Mossack Fonseca provided representation services to many, if not
most, companies. We also noted that general Powers of Attorney were granted.
Even though most companies were eliminated, can you confirm the resignation of
our directors, when appropriate, and the revocation of the Powers of Attorney?
In addition, can you say since when do we know that the client and his companies
were being investigated as part of the Odebrecht scandal?" Questioned, on
February 14, 2017, the CEO of MF in the British Virgin Islands, Daphne Durand,
eager to get rid of those toxic customers.

CEO of the law firm after learning the details of Odebrecht’s bribes in Peru
Mossack
Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands asked to update the position of the
related companies they helped to create and which, in some cases, they were
still related with.
Just
a week before, she had received from Wendy Agard, from the Compliance Department
of the Panamanian office, an email with the link of one of the reviews made
about the investigation on the digital newspaper Ojo Público in Peru, revealing
that entrepreneurs close to Toledo and under investigation by the justice system
in that country had used companies created by themselves to make deposits and
transactions that could be linked to payments of bribes.
Two
days later, from Panama, Yakeline Pérez would send Durand a chart with the
updated information of 15 companies registered between 1997 and
2015.
The
Peruvian media placed special emphasis on one of the companies, Vision
Investments Equities. They said, based on the first leak of the Panama Papers,
that it "may be the most important offshore company" linked to Toledo’s
operators Maiman and Saylan, and that in 2000, it managed almost 68 million
dollars for the surplus of its assets [I1], which Argentines Stigol and Imar
denied in interviews for this report.
Based
on documents of the communications of the group with the Panamanian law firm
that represented their companies, the also "suspicious" CIT Management Corp -
according to the Suspicious Activity Report or SAR - was the owner of just over
half of the shares of Vision Investments Equities, the other shareholders of
which, in order of importance, were Maiman, head of operations of the Merhav
Group, Leo Malamud, also Peruvian and Israeli-born, and
Saylan.
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According
to the SAR, Vision Investments Equities, an investor in telecommunications
companies, born in Panama in 1997, but domiciled since December 2015 in the BVI,
was the only one of the five "suspicious" companies by February 2017 that had
activities in Venezuela.
Vision
was incorporated simultaneously with another Panamanian company, Digital
Investments Associates, at the request of Bentata, a Caracas law firm, which
according to Imar, was fulfilling orders from the law firm formerly known as
Hicks Muse, then HM Capital Partners?a private company in the United States of
America, specialized in leveraged buyouts? to create several companies for Inter
in order to group partners and managers and give shares to senior
managers.
One
of such companies was Vision Investments Equities and the instructions to create
it, drawn from Caracas by lawyer José Javier Briz Kaltenborn, required Mossack
Fonseca not to include the directors of the companies, and that Powers of
Attorney were issued for Mr. Saylan in the name of Digital Investments
Associates, and another for Malamud, Imar and Stigol, and Isaac and Gustavo
Zviklich, in the case of Vision Investments
Equities.
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MF
issued the full and general Powers of Attorney, which allowed them to manage the
companies "without any limitation," "anywhere in the world." Since 1998, at the
request of Bentata, the Panamanian law firm began sending invoices for the
maintenance of both companies directly to an office in the Ciudad Tamanaco
Shopping Center (CCCT), in Caracas, addressed to Saylan, then vice president of
Merhav -Maiman's company.
Just One Among “Cachi Chien” (Almost a Hundred)
Venezuelan
telecommunications company Intercable, now known as Inter, was born in 1996 in
the city of Barquisimeto, western central Venezuela. Two years before, Alberto
Imar had the first contact with Maiman's group, according to an email interview.
"They asked me for a professional opinion about the project they had, together
with other partners, to launch a subscription TV company in Venezuela." He was
called like other executives with experience in the field.
Always,
according to that story, Imar dragged Eduardo Stigol. Together, they made the
market studies, the business plan and offered themselves as an independent
management to carry out that project. They knew each other from Argentina and
both had experience with subscription television, unlike Maiman who, according
to Stigol, joined Inter as a shareholder "who did not understand this business"
and put up "some capital" at the beginning. "Some" could have meant around three
million dollars, as he recalls, a figure that considers "very small" for an
entrepreneur "as big as he (Maiman) was at that time."
However,
I did not consider him a "small investor." "He was a major partner, who made a
small investment in a business in Latin America. He was going to wait for
results in time. Unfortunately, the political condition in Venezuela did not
allow results and he did not see them," said Eduardo Stigol, president of
Inter.
When
Intercable was born, it was still a year before Venezuelan Bentata’s lawyers
contacted those of MF, but Stigol affirmed that "originally they were the same
partners" of Vision Investments Equities, including Maiman. However, both he and
Imar insist on dissociating themselves and Inter from Maiman, Vision Investments
Equities and, in general, from any other company or business related to Maiman.
They claim that they were never their employees or of any of their companies,
that since 1998, he was a "minority shareholder" who never had "anything to do
with the management of the company."
"I
may had seen him (Maiman) five times in all my life. He had an executive, Sabih
Saylan, who did visit Venezuela frequently at the beginning, in those years
(late 90's), because he had other businesses, and he was the one who called me
to ask how the business was doing. But for them, ours was a business where they
were never involved, and I totally do not know what other businesses they had,"
says Stigol.
Imar,
who is very active in communications on behalf of the Mossack Fonseca group,
seconded Stigol, "We were totally oblivious to the other businesses of Maiman,
in Venezuela and abroad. Our only connection was Inter, where he was a minority
partner. We learned about the problems he had with Peruvian justice through the
media, just like the rest of the world."
The
owner of the Inter brand in Venezuela is Corporación Telemic C.A. Based on
information from RNC (National Register of Contractors), in 2015, all the shares
of Corporación Telemic C.A. belonged to a company registered in Luxembourg,
Venezuela Cable Service Holdings, Ltd., and although it appears as dissolved
since September 2015, Imar insists that it is still valid in another
jurisdiction, but he does not specify which one, and that it still owns
Corporación Telemic.
In
what follows, the statements of Stigol and Imar do not agree. According to Imar,
the owner of Venezuela Cable Service Holdings is Intercable Holdings, a company
active in the Cayman Islands since February 2011. For Imar, the chain ends in
Venezuela Cable Service Holdings. In any case, both agree that since 1998, the
majority shareholder is a fund that is now leaded by US investor Tom Hicks -of
the late HM Capital Partners- and a group of banks, including Citibank and
Chase. Together they control 75% of the company. The remaining percentage of
shares is divided among other shareholders, including original shareholders
Stigol and Imar.
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Until
2015, among the members of Corporación Telemic, owner of the Inter brand, there
was a representation of the Maiman group, the group of the HM Capital Partners
fund and the management of Imar and Stigol. Today, many are disconnected from
the company. The owner of Telemic was a company currently inactive in
Luxembourg, Venezuela Cable Service Holdings, which was in turn owned by a
company of the Cayman Islands, Intercable Holdings.
Maiman
would have completely separated from the company, according to Argentine
entrepreneurs, who claim to have lost contact with him. But Stigol and Imar
versions as to how and when Maiman distanced himself from the company have many
inconsistencies.
In
any case, as revealed in documents from the registry of the British Virgin
Islands, which Armando.Info has access to thanks to the cooperation of the
Investigative Dashboard, Vision Investments Equities was liquidated on June 12,
2017, a month after its closing was requested.
"Some
shareholders would still be linked to Inter's business and others not. Maiman
was one of those who decided to separate from this business. Thus, the
shareholders who decided to stay did so outside Vision, the others disassociated
themselves, and since Vision was only intended to represent them all together in
Inter, it finally dissolved," says Imar, who says that neither Saylan nor
Malamud, of the Maiman group, are current members of Corporación Telemic. Also
others from his management group and some members related to Hicks' group had
also disassociated themselves from the business. When they began to separate
from Inter's business, most of the companies that had been created between 1997
and 1998 were liquidated.
According
to Stigol, the separation of Maiman would have occurred due to health problems,
not because of the corruption scandals surrounding the Peruvian
entrepreneur.
The
online portal of the Merhav Group of Maiman y Saylan still refers to Inter
Venezuela as an undertaking under its "ownership or management." It highlights
that the group "promoted and developed," as an investor, "the largest cable TV
operator in the country."
And
it is not the only project in Venezuela that they proudly
display.
Works
with the State
"In
partnership with the Halcrow Group in the United Kingdom, Merhav implemented
major water and sewage treatment projects with a total investment of $ 250
million," they affirm in the portal, referring to the work that Merhav developed
in Venezuela for the Environment portfolio.
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The
Merhav Group, a conglomerate of companies specializing in the development of
large-scale infrastructure projects that Maiman founded in 1975, displays on its
website the investments made by the Group in Venezuela in terms of
telecommunications and environmental sanitation.
According
to the National Registry of Contractors (RNC), the Merhav Group’s company in
Venezuela executed projects for different Venezuelan State agencies, under the
administration of Saylan and the general management of an individual named Meir
Gabay. Although it is now unable to contract with the State, in 2004, Merhav
Venezuela provided technical and technological support in the inspection and
chemical cleaning of the desalination plant on the main island of the Los Roques
archipelago, a Caribbean paradise, at one hour by plane, north of
Caracas.
In
August 2006, the Group undertook two other projects, also contracted by the
State. One project, through Fundación Propatria 2000, ?an organization attached
to the Ministry of Infrastructure, now attached to the Ministry of the Office of
the Presidency and Follow-up to Government Administration? to participate in the
construction of the longed-for and controversial Acarigua - Barquisimeto
highway, to be opened for the 42nd Copa América Soccer Championship, which took
place in 2007, in Venezuela.
However,
by the end of 2007, only 40% of the project was completed, as recorded in the
RNC form. An environmental sanitation project, simultaneously undertook by the
group through the State Government of Aragua, had the same percentage of
progress.
However,
another company claims responsibility for the execution of these works on its
website, Mundo Kariña Ambiente C.A. The names of its partners are repeated in
this plot, Gabay and a woman named Esther
Pirozzi.
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Mundo
Kariña Ambiente C.A. claims on its website having executed since 2001 at least
four projects for the Venezuelan Ministry of the Environment, in the states of
Anzoátegui, Carabobo, Monagas and Falcón. It details a "wide experience" in the
country since 1994, precisely when the Maiman group contacted Imar to talk about
the Inter project.
In
addition to the Acarigua-Barquisimeto highway, there are the expansion of the
Barquisimeto-Cabudare Intercommunal Avenue and the construction of the canal
bridge for the irrigation of 900 hectares of mainly sugarcane land, of the
producers of the State of Aragua, in the central region of the
country.
These
and other projects were being carried out in Venezuela while the "criminal pact"
- as the Prosecutor's Office in Lima has called it - was being developed in
Peru. This pact allowed Odebrecht to transfer millions of dollars to the three
accounts of Maiman, from where they were transferred to Confiado Internacional,
and from this to Ecostate Consulting and Milan Ecotech Consulting to, finally
and after the long journey, nurture the coffers of Ecoteva Consulting Group
S.A., through which real estate was later acquired and real estate mortgages
were paid to finally benefit former President Toledo.
All
this is told by the Peruvian Prosecutor's Office in the request for the
extradition of Toledo filed to Judge Richard Concepción Carhuancho, on February
19 of this year. Among the evidence contained in the 54-page document is Grupo
Instrucontrol C.A., a Venezuelan company, the members of which are also part of
Maiman's network in Venezuela.
Although
they only appear in the RNC as flow meter distributors for the Venezuelan State,
this company transferred $ 54,000 in connection with a "Valencia Project" to one
of Maiman’s accounts, where the money of Odebrecht ended up, the account of the
offshore Trailbridge. Until the closing of this report, we tried to obtain
details about this project, but the only response was that the company had
closed and that its owners left the country.

In
one of the proofs of the extradition request of Peruvian President Alejandro
Toledo, filed before judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho, on February 19 of this
year, appears a transfer for
$
54,000 from a Venezuelan company to one of the offshore accounts of entrepreneur
Yosef Maiman, investigated for the bribes of
Odebrecht.