Mexican authorities are investigating the operations of Saab and Pulido since 2018, at the end of the administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto. Although at the time they made accusations against the scheme developed by the Colombian businessmen, everything was diluted in a bureaucratic limbo. But the shake-up caused by the arrest of Alex Saab, now makes it possible to reveal the weaknesses of that investigation, which in practice, did not only absolve Saab’s and Pulido’s companies, but also the Mexican suppliers who shipped to Venezuela products of very low nutritional quality.

The behind-the-scenes of that process is a story of omissions and silences that shows how Mexican and Venezuelan authorities knew for months about the poor quality of the merchandise, but did nothing to stop that questionable trade and even relieved those responsible of any punishment. 

On October 18, 2018, the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico, reported through Israel Lira - the deputy attorney general specialized in organized crime investigation - that food exports to Venezuela were being made through a “fraudulent scheme” with “unusual operations” and “low quality” products with “overpricing.”

The official pointed directly at Group Grand Limited, the Hong Kong-based shell company that Saab and Pulido control, and a company with the same name in Mexico, run by relatives and operators of the Colombian tandem, as well as the network of suppliers with which they entered into contracts. Despite the seriousness of the allegations and some initial measures, like the freezing of bank accounts, the same official opened the door to a “reparatory agreement” with those involved, by way of compensation.

“The accused will hand over to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) the amount of three million dollars, approximately 56 million pesos, which will be allocated to maintain the mandate of UNHCR in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lira said at the time.

The shadow of the irregularity always surrounded that “reparatory agreement,” and the amount of the penalty seemed ridiculous for a business where hundreds of millions of dollars had been moved. Today, Santiago Nieto, head of Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), describes it as an “unusual event.”

“The businessmen and individuals charged made a reparatory agreement with the Attorney General’s Office that is illegal, because despite the existence of an irregularity of 156 million dollars, they were imposed a donation of only three million dollars (...) Instead of this money being deposited in an account of the Treasury of the Federation (Tesofe), as it happens in this type of cases, it went to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We already reported this to the Ministry of Public Administration and to the Prosecutor’s Office,” Nieto explained to Claudia Solera, a reporter of the Excelsior daily newspaper in Mexico City and coauthor of this report.

Other documents prove the illegality and the flaws of the agreement with the companies operated by Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido, as well as their Mexican suppliers.

Confirmed Suspicions

By the time the Mexican Attorney General’s Office made both the complaint and the corresponding “reparatory agreement” public, there was plenty of evidence about the anomalies and the actors around the export scheme. Armando.Info had revealed the participation of Saab and Pulido in Group Grand Limited and, in February 2018, documented the poor nutritional quality of the Mexican milk powder that arrived with the CLAP boxes through a laboratory analysis of samples of the different brands of milk, conducted by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV).

Shortly thereafter, the Venezuelan state-owned company Corpovex, in charge of centralizing public imports, asked the Mexican companies to comply with sanitary registries. The Venezuelan prosecutor in exile, Luisa Ortega Diaz, had said in August 2017 that Group Grand Limited “presumably belongs to the president of the Republic,” referring to Maduro.

It is now known that the investigation that led to that pronouncement by Mexican authorities in October 2018, began in June of that year. At that time, the Financial Intelligence Unit filed complaint DEN-UIF-40-2018 to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office and the Ministry of Public Administration.

In addition to Group Grand Limited, the company controlled by Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido, the brief listed Mexican companies, such as, El Sardinero, Deshidratados Alimenticios e Industriales (DAI), Empresas Bonobox, Jaifar Comercial, Grupo Brandon, Rice & Beans and Productos Serel. The list also included Asasi Food FZC, a company registered in the United Arab Emirates and also used by Saab and Pulido, and 4PL Industrial, a Colombian company that provides logistics and product packaging for the Claps, also linked to the Saab-Pulido duo. The complaint also included the names of Mexican businessmen Jaime Garcia and Raphael Jihad El Khoury Karam.

In April 2018, days before the disputed presidential election in which Maduro secured re-election, owners and executives of these companies had met with Alvaro Pulido Vargas at Madrid’s luxurious Hotel Villa Magna to expedite the deal. Suspicions against Group Grand Limited forced the Colombian businessmen to replace that company with Asasi Food FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates―whereby they obtained a contract for 345 million Euros in 2018―and Mulberry Proje Yatirim, a Turkish company.

Indeed, in a letter dated April 2018, Group Grand Limited proposed to Corpovex - the state-owned company that signed the contracts with Claps intermediaries - the “transfer of the financial rights corresponding to contract CPVX-CJ-CONT-0086-2017” to the Turkish company Mulberry Proje Yatirim. This agreement amounted to almost 426 million dollars and was the second one achieved by Group Grand Limited for the Claps. The first one, for 340 million dollars, was signed in late 2016 through the State Government of Tachira, with Jose Vielma Mora in office.

Group Grand Limited, as well as Asasi Food FZC and Mulberry Proje Yatirim, in addition to Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido themselves, were sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in July 2019. “Several companies Saab and Pulido own or control were used in Saab and Pulido’s food corruption scheme,” the Treasury said in a statement. 

Almost simultaneously, a Florida state court charged them for money laundering in connection with the first deal they struck with Chavismo in 2011 for the construction of prefabricated homes.

But authorities in Mexico, contrary to those in the United States, did not criminalize Saab’s and Pulido’s scheme. They simply opened the door to “reparatory agreements” that seem to be custom-made for the offenders.

For months, company El Sardinero was the main supplier of the Clap boxes that left the port of Veracruz in Mexico to the port of La Guaira, on the vessels named CNP Paita and Viking Merlin. Rice & Beans and Productos Serel also supplied their products, such as rice and lentils, while Grupo Brandon, a company with a very diffuse trace in the state of Nuevo Leon, virtually monopolized the shipments of milk powder with different brands of very poor nutritional quality.

Four Pats on the Back

The first reparatory agreement was completed on October 12, 2018. Each representative of El Sardinero, Delmar Logistica, Almacenes Vaca and Rice & Beans paid $ 750,000 for a total of $3 million that would go to UNHCR, announced by the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico a few days later. In addition, they promised to hand over to the authorities 1,300 containers with about two million Clap combos.

Santiago Nieto, current head of Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit, highlights several flaws in the resolution. “First, these three million dollars should not have been deposited to the UNHCR, as a penalty, but to the Tesofe, as provided for in the Code of Criminal Procedures in the event of a reparatory agreement. It should be so by law. It is also illegal to agree the confiscation of 1,300 containers, later sent to Venezuela, when one of the irregularities had been indeed the acquisition of these low quality nutritional foods.”

The businessmen, for their part, claim to have complied with the authorities’ demands at the time. For instance, regarding El Sardinero, they insist that they honored the “reparatory agreement,” as they paid the donation, paralyzed their business with Venezuela and delivered the two million Clap boxes to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.

But that was not the only “reparatory agreement.” On October 16, 2018, the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico agreed with representatives of the Kosmos group ―the products of which, namely Productos Serel and La Cosmopolitana, were also included in the Claps― to impose a fine of just $120,000, which they also had to pay to UNHCR. For example, Kosland milk powder was one of the products of Productos Serel and among those with the worst nutritional values. The penalty is insignificant considering that, according to the Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit, Productos Serel sold merchandise for several million dollars to Wellsford Trading Corp, another intermediary contracted by the Maduro government.

Wellsford Trading Corp, registered in Panama, signed on March 30, 2017, contract 0032 for almost $70 million with the state-owned Corpovex. 

A third “reparatory agreement" was sealed on October 26, 2018. It was agreed upon with company Almacenes Vaca, on which a fine of just over 14 million pesos was imposed, equivalent to some $700,000, also payable to UNHCR. The owner of this company also owns Rice & Beans, another of the main Clap suppliers from 2017 to 2018. Just a single invoice of July 2018 shows that Rice & Beans charged Mulberry Proje Yatirim - the Turkish company, whereby Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido replaced Group Grand Limited - $220,000 dollars for products.

The fourth “reparatory agreement” was signed on November 21, 2018. In this case, the authorities agreed a fine of $110,000 with the representative of companies Jaifar Comercial, Delmar Logistica and Empresas Bonobox, which at some point participated in the logistics for the Clap from Mexico.

But if the criteria of the “reparatory agreements” are now questioned by the head of the Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit, even stranger is that Group Grand Limited, the company used in Mexico by Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido, has managed to recover their bank accounts after authorities ordered to freeze them. 

Two years after the investigation started in Mexico, only three companies remain blocked in the financial system of that country: Grupo Brandon, Group Grand Limited Hong Kong and Group Grand Limited Mexico. However, the company managed by Saab and Pulido won in November 2019 an injunction against the Financial Intelligence Unit, thus, it could unfreeze two bank accounts in Scotiabank Inverlat.

The document that justified the decision states that under “Article 115 of the Law on Credit Institutions, the bloking only applies to commercial agreements represented by the Mexican State and in the case of the food pantries, the negotiations were made between private companies. Paradoxically, the Venezuelan government now describes Alex Saab as a “government agent” for the purchase of food and medicine, and even claims “diplomatic immunity” for him. 

“The main problems that we have faced in Mexico regarding the case of the Clap pantries are, first, the illegal reparatory agreement established with the businessmen by the Attorney General’s Office of the previous administration, led by Alberto Elias Beltran, and, second, the case-law that former minister Eduardo Medina Mora promoted to avoid that there was a freezing of accounts by the FIU, in which it is established, that if there is no application of international nature, there is the possibility of unfreezing the accounts. And although there is an international application, the judges granted the injunction,” as censured by the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit.

The accounts of Group Grand Limited were initially blocked on October 5, 2018, after the suspicion of operations with funds from illegal sources. One of the company’s representatives in Mexico, Andres Leon Rodriguez, filed a petition for injunction against the measure. After a legal battle between the company and the authorities, the accounts were finally unblocked in November 2019. 

Other companies that were reported by Mexican authorities for their participation in the Clap plot, such as Ilas Mexico, B-Eminet, Digrava and Evaporadora y Secadora de Leches are near to achieve a measure similar to the one that benefited Group Grand Limited. Another proof that the investigation in Mexico fell into oblivion and that there were hardly any responsible for the accusations made in October 2018. With the apprehension of Alex Saab, the Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit seems ready to resume what it began two years ago and delve into the suspicious trail that the millionaire Clap business left in that country.

This is a work investigated and published simultaneously by Armando.Info and the Excelsior de Mexico newspaper.

The analysis, conducted from October 5 to December 14, 2018, covered the 27 canned tuna brands present at that time in the Mexican market. According to the results of the test, 14 brands showed high soy content added. Some presentations had more volume of soy than fish, which startled the Mexican general public. But the finding is not unfamiliar to Venezuelans. Since Nicolás Maduro formalized the plan in March 2016, Mexico has been one of the countries where intermediaries handpicked by the Government buy the products of the food combo, including canned tuna.

One of the most valued brands in the Mexican market, which has reached the homes of the poorest in Venezuela with the so-called Clap boxes, is El Dorado. The presentation of 140 grams of yellowfin tuna in oil has 21% to 44% of soy in "drained solids", while the version in water had an index of 13% to 22% of soy in "drained solids." Both values easily exceed the values registered by the brand in the examination conducted by the same institution in 2015. Back then, the canned tuna in oil showed 9% to 26% of soy, while in water it had 4% to 9% of soy.

"In soy concentrations of 30%, 40%, and even 60%, as we found it, the soy ingredient replaces fish," affirms Guadalupe Velasco Rodríguez, director of the biological-chemical area of the Profeco laboratory. In addition to the deception of consumers that the replacement represents because the label does not specify the soy percentage, there are also nutritional implications for consumers when the final protein contribution of the product is changed.

"For every 100 grams (3.5 oz) -a standard measure- you will have an important amount of protein but never as significant as that of tuna muscle, because tuna has no carbohydrates or other components, while soy does, hence, it does not have so much protein," explains Pablo Hernández, nutritionist and professor at Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), the main state and autonomous university, after analyzing the results of the Mexican agency. He explains that the vegetable protein is absorbed and digested slower than the animal protein, which "does not harm or affect health," unless the person is allergic to soy.

El Dorado is not the only Mexican brand of canned tuna with high concentrations of soy included in the Clap combos. The Ancla brand tuna in oil contains 10% to 14% of soy in "drained solids." The canned tuna in water ranges between 17% and 26%. Both presentations also showed high concentrations of soy in the analysis that Profeco conducted in 2015, but that did not prevent them from supplying the combos subsidized by the Venezuelan Government.

A third brand called Tuny totaled 1% to 4% of soy for the yellowfin product in water. "It would be justifiable to find one percent of soy, for example, if used with a technological purpose (some producers use soy broth to compact the fish). Our conclusion is that soy is replacing fish," says the director of Profeco.

The Mexican authorities approved since 2017 "certificates of free sale export" to Venezuela for both El Dorado and Tuny, as well as other brands that were not analyzed by Profeco. It seems clear that behind the addition of soy to canned tuna there is an operation to lower costs and increase profitability: The greater the amount of vegetable protein, the lower the cost of the product. This practice of Mexican industrialists, discovered by the authorities, bounces in Venezuelans’ stomachs.

What goes around comes around/ A mouth Close Catches No Flies

Complaints about the quality of the Claps’ food emerged almost from the beginning of the state plan. Indeed, canned tuna and milk powder have been the products most questioned by the beneficiaries of the program with which Maduro affirms to be facing an "economic war" by local businessmen and international factors.

The poor quality of the milk was verified after the Institute of Science and Food Technology of the UCV, at the request of Armando.info, analyzed 14 Mexican brands that were distributed in the Claps from late 2017 to early 2018. The analyzes showed that the companies lied in the labeling and ended up packing a paste high in sodium and carbohydrates, but low in calcium and proteins, far from the requirements of the Venezuelan nutritional standard.

On October 18, 2018, the Attorney General's Office of Mexico revealed that it had detected a "fraudulent scheme" between Venezuelan government intermediaries and Mexican companies, whereby "low quality products" were sold and exported at an "overprice." On that occasion, the Mexican authorities pointed a finger directly to the network hatched by Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas, main beneficiaries in the mediation behind the Claps.

Profeco's study now confirms what the palate of Venezuelan consumers detected almost immediately, as well as the alerts from sources involved in the sale of products for the Claps. "Venezuelan intermediaries came to Mexico asking for the cheapest tuna on the market, regardless of whether it was at the expense of quality. As to the cheap milk, they were told that the protein would be reduced up to three times, and in the case of canned tuna, it would have more soy than fish. But they only cared to save two to four dollars per box," admits an anonymous Mexican entrepreneur.

Official figures indicate that from 2016 to 2018, 231 million Clap combos have been distributed. Although the plan aimed to produce food, as small cells throughout the country, most of these combos have been imported and many of them were bought in Mexico by intermediaries who finally sold them to the Government of Maduro at 31 to 37 US dollars. "In Mexico, up to 2,000 Clap boxes were brought together per day. How much money could this savings represent? If they saved two dollars per box, it represented 4,000 dollars per day and if they managed to save four dollars per box, that meant 8,000 dollars per day," says the entrepreneur.

In the case of canned tuna, nutritionist Pablo Hernández explains that "soy protein isolate, although slightly more expensive, it is not as expensive as animal protein. So, whether it is whole soy, soy flour or soy protein, it will always less expensive than regular meat."

In January 2017, Group Grand Limited ?the company registered in Hong Kong with which Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido started their participation in the sale of food for the Claps since late 2016? invoiced the canned tuna at $ 6.29 per kilogram. Months later, in September, it charged it at $ 4.22. In that period, it increased the price of each Clap box from 34 to 36.9 dollars. Other intermediaries, like M.I.R Importació I Exportació charged $ 4.71 per kilogram of canned tuna in October 2017. Wellsford Trading Corp and FB Foods, both Panamanians, J&B International Trading, domiciled in Miami, or Mass Joy Industries Limited, also registered in Hong Kong, have been other intermediaries. Each Clap box contains, in the best of cases, up to six cans of tuna, a total of around 800 grams per box. It is one of the 11 products included in the subsidized food combo.

The profit of the intermediaries is in detriment of the quality. There could be other brands of canned tune with high concentrations of soy sold through the Claps. Marhel, La Marina, Mazatún and Capitán Nemo identify on their labels the presence of soy or "vegetable broth," but without specifying the proportion. None of these brands was analyzed by Profeco, as they did not circulate through the marketing channels in the domestic market of Mexico at the time of sample collection. 

In addition, several of these brands offered presentations of flaked or shredded tuna, which multiplies the possibility of finding more soy. "The products were we found more percentages of soy were the flaked and shredded presentations, which are the cheapest," said the director of Profeco's laboratory.

Those versions of flaked or shredded tuna have been the most criticized by Venezuelans. In social media videos and comments about their bad appearance, unpleasant taste or lack of consistency have boomed. "The tuna in the Clap box is always minced because it's not real tuna, just fish waste that they grind to make it look like tuna. When you try it you realize that it tastes more like the sardine but quite unpleasant," wrote a user on February 18.

The May 15, 2017 edition of Diario 2001 newspaper is proof that the complaints go back in time. The cover story on that day was about a family that affirmed that two babies died for eating Clap tuna. "A family of Ocumare del Tuy (State of Miranda) denounces intoxication from eating products from a Clap box bought a day earlier. Intake was lethal for the two youngest kids (11 months and two years old), who presented cerebral edema, according to the autopsy shown by relatives."

Venezuelan officials have avoided commenting on the quality of Clap food, although that was one of the flags used on February 23 to avoid the arrival of "humanitarian aid" promoted by the Venezuelan opposition. Only Maduro admitted in December 2017 that they received complaints on that regard, but said that "corrective measures were taken immediately." However, the complaint by the Attorney General in last year’s October, the finding in May 2018 in the port of Cartagena, Colombia, of 400 tons with Clap products "unfit" for human consumption, or this recent study by Profeco call the words of the president into question. At least no one seems to have noticed that they bought a canned tuna very different from the one sold in the Venezuelan market.

In Venezuela, companies that sell canned tuna do not add soy, at least the main brands. Moreover, most of the presentations are of fish loins, as established by the technical specifications. "The proportion of loin versus crumb should have a minimum of 80/20, that is, 80% loin and 20% crumb," established the quality standard that the Ministry of Food sent to Mexican suppliers, which is based on the Covenin 1412 standard.

"Venezuelan tuna was always of very good quality. The different brands always declared 100% tuna. You ate real tuna. Now, when you do not have the opportunity to know what you are eating, it is one more factor that adds to the already deteriorated diet of Venezuelans," recalls Marianella Herrera, a nutritionist and director of the Venezuelan Health Observatory. She says that in some communities they have visited, consumers of Clap products said that they use "more mayonnaise to cover the taste" of canned tuna "because soy has a completely different flavor."

Beyond the taste, the specialist insists that the vegetable protein is not bad, but you should know "what is the proportion" contained in the product to know exactly how to meet the nutritional requirements "based on the group you want to feed."

So far, that has not been an impediment for Maduro’s Government to allocate millions of dollars for the products that his intermediaries buy to Mexican industrialists.

* This is a work researched and published simultaneously by Armando.Info and the Excélsior of Mexico

At that time, the official statement of the Mexican agency only referred to the cast of characters that move around the scheme of import intermediation of Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Nain Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas. But did not made an allusion to the suppliers, a trio of business groups in Mexico that hold in their few hands a billion-dollar business.

Jorge and Elías Landsmanas Dymensztejn, owners of Corporativo Kosmos and its subsidiaries Productos Serel and La Cosmopolitana; Jorge Carlos Fernández Francés of El Sardinero; and Aristóteles Vaca Pérez, owner of Almacenes Vaca and Rice & Beans, are the names of those who supply a fundamental portion of the supplies that arrive in Venezuela packed as Clap boxes or bags. They are joined by Grupo Brandon, a dummy company that in 2018 has monopolized the offer of powdered milk for the Venezuelan social program.

Some of these companies have already appeared on the Mexican press as protagonists of public incidents. For instance, La Cosmopolitana was responsible for distributing Salmonella-contaminated food in a jail called Puente Grande in 2014, which intoxicated 450 inmates. El Sardinero was fined for falsifying the address in a public tender, while Almacenes Vaca holds around 600 contracts by direct award with the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto, outgoing president of Mexico.

In the statement of October 18, the authorities preferred to omit the participation of these companies for which the government plan formalized by Nicolás Maduro on March 12, 2016 became a millionaire opportunity. Figures from the Ministry of Economy of Mexico indicate that from January 2017 to August 2018 alone, exports of the 11 products containing Clap boxes totaled 850 million dollars. A significant increase if taking into account that months before the creation of the state plan, the trade between both countries was minimum and there were just sporadic exports of vegetable oil, corn flour and lentils.

Deep-Sea Fishing

As to El Sardinero, self-defined as a "leading company in food services", business started soon. In early 2017, it dispatched thousands of Clap combos for Cobiserta, a company attached to the Táchira State Government, with which Group Grand Limited signed in late 2016 a contract to supply the program of the Venezuelan Government. At the time of the agreement between Group Grand Limited - the holding registered in Hong Kong by Saab and Pulido - and the State Government of Táchira, in western Venezuela, the governor of the State was José Gregorio Vielma Mora, a captain of the army of Hugo Chavez's batch, former director of the national tax agency and then Minister of Foreign Trade of Nicolás Maduro for a few months.

On October 18, the assistant attorney general of Mexico pointed at the network created around Group Grand Limited, with which the duo of Colombian entrepreneurs organized all their import business. "The presence of several operators was detected, like Alex X, apparently related to Government authorities of that country, as well as Álvaro X, Emmanuel X, Santiago X and Andrés X, who, with the purpose of obtaining the food products to be supplied to the Venezuelan Government, resort to other companies in different countries, including Mexico." He was referring to Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido, but also to representatives of Group Grand Limited in Mexico, Santiago Uzcátegui Pinto, Andrés Eduardo León Rodríguez and Emmanuel Enrique Rubio González, son of Álvaro Pulido, who changed his name shortly after 2000, originally Germán Rubio. The General Prosecutor, Luisa Ortega Díaz, dismissed by Nicolás Maduro, denounced in last year’s August that the Venezuelan president was behind Group Grand Limited.

A recent bill, dated July 7, 2018, reveals that El Sardinero maintains food supplies for the Claps in partnership with Colombian entrepreneurs, although no longer through Group Grand Limited. The company now invoices the goods to Asasi Food FZC, a company registered in the United Arab Emirates, which has replaced Group Grand Limited in the Saab-Pulido network. The customs figures also confirm that the business of El Sardinero is running. In the first half of this year, it sent almost 100,000 tons of food to Venezuela, which makes it the Mexican company the largest exporter of products to the South American country.

In 2015, the name of Jorge Carlos Fernández Francés, owner of El Sardinero, was news when it was discovered that, in order to evade taxes, he put Mexico City license plates on to a Ferrari 458 that he used to drive around Paris, Barcelona and Rome at least four years before. The registration number 415-SYL used by his sports car actually belonged to a 2003 Golf, according to car records of the government of Mexico City, and it was in the name of El Sardinero. The company has also had its clashes with the law. On December 22, 2014, the Public Service sanctioned it with a ban of just under two and a half years to enter into contracts with federal agencies and entities, and a fine of 672,000 pesos (around $ 34,000), for falsifying the address in a public tender.

Captive Markets

It is not the only Mexican company linked to the Clap business, engaged in irregularities. The Landsmanas Dymensztejn family, owner of La Cosmopolitana and Productos Serel, was penalized in July 2014 by health authorities of the Government of Jalisco, province of western Mexico, after verifying that they sold food with Salmonella in the Puente Grande prison. It is the same conglomerate that sells Kosland milk powder, manufactured by Serel Products, which arrives in Venezuela in the Clap combos. The brand was one of the worst in nutritional terms after the physical-chemical analysis conducted by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) practiced on several Mexican milks at the request of Armando.info. The product showed excess carbohydrates and sodium, but low calcium levels, to the point that children had to consume 24.8 glasses to cover their daily calcium supply instead of the 1.8 glasses that are normally required. Clap combos have also contained lentils, beans and sugar from the same Kosland brand of Serel Products.

The company was sanctioned because of what happened in the Puente Grande prison. Although the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) continues receiving complaints from inmates' families about "poor-quality and unhygienic food" from La Cosmopolitana, the millionaire contracts to provide food to several Mexican prisons have not ceased and it has just obtained a new one for 143 million Mexican pesos (just over 7.1 million dollars) to offer food services to the inmates of the Centers for Social Reintegration and Adolescents of the State of Baja California, northwest from Mexico. According to Contrabook, La Cosmopolitana accrues 4,623 million pesos (around 230 million dollars) for public contracts in Mexico.

Customs reports, however, seem to indicate that this year the participation of La Cosmopolitana and Productos Serel in food shipments to Venezuela has dropped. In the first half of year, shipments total around 150 tons, well below El Sardinero or Grupo Brandon, a dummy company that in 2018 has monopolized the sale of milk powder for Claps, one of the products from which Government intermediaries get more financial gain.

The food combos distributed by Maduro’s Government have included several powdered milk brands of Grupo Brandon, which are unknown in the Mexican market and of dubious quality. Incorporated in 2004, Brandon changed ownership in April 2017, shortly before starting its exports to Venezuela. Since then, the company address on the packaging of the product has changed.

An invoice of July 18, 2018 allows establishing the connection with the network of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido. Like El Sardinero, Grupo Brandon billed Asasi Food FZC, the company registered in the United Arab Emirates, the goods that would eventually be received in Venezuela by Corporación Única de Servicios Productivos y Alimentarios (Sole Corporation of Productive and Food Services -Cuspal), attached to the Ministry of Food.

The document shows that Grupo Brandon sold the kilo of milk from brands like Vilec, Santa Paula and Suprema to Asasi Food FZC, at $ 2.20.

Although the product price billed by the intermediaries to the Government of Maduro was not verified for this report, in 2017,  Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido, through Group Grand Limited, first charged the kilo of Mexican milk powder at 4.75 dollars to the Government of the State of Táchira, and months later, charged it at almost 7 dollars to Cuspal, as part of the two contracts reached with the Venezuelan authorities. Both prices double and more than triplicate, respectively, the price set by Brandon for the product put in this year’s July.

Customs information reveals that in the first half of year, Grupo Brandon exported almost 30,000 tons to Venezuela, barely behind El Sardinero and Rice & Beans, the other company that is winning big time in Mexico with the Venezuelan government program.

Entrepreneur Aristóteles Vaca Pérez, originally from the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico, is the man behind Rice & Beans and Almacenes Vaca. This last one allowed him to stood out as one of the entrepreneurs preferred by Enrique Peña Nieto. Not in vain, in this six-year period to be closed, he obtained about 600 contracts by direct award and through Diconsa, the largest social network of grocery stores in Mexico, responsible for ensuring the distribution of food to the most financially vulnerable population.

Rice & Beans was the vehicle through which the tycoon reached the Clap business. From this year’s January and June alone, the company placed almost 75,000 tons of food in Venezuelan ports. As with El Sardinero and Grupo Brandon, exports are made through the network of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido. For example, on July 17, 2018, Rice & Beans sold $ 220,104 in food to Mulberry Proje Yatirim, a Turkish company that rounds off the intermediation scheme designed by the Colombian business duo.

Mulberry Proje Yatirim, together with Asasi Food FZC, replaced Group Grand Limited. On April 6, 2018, Group Grand Limited requested by letter to the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex) - a body that centralizes Venezuelan public imports - the "assignment of financial rights corresponding to contract CPVX-CJ-CONT-0086- 2017" in favor of Mulberry Proje Yatirim. That agreement alone required the supply of 11.5 million Clap combos to the Venezuelan Government.

Even if the authorities did not refer to the Mexican companies in the announcements made on October 18, it is clear that the Clap boxes has also been a millionaire business for entrepreneurs in that country, and though it may be about to die out, the other announcement made by the Mexican assistant attorney general deserves acknowledgement, "The accused undertake not to carry out, by themselves or through an intermediary, any business transaction with the Government of Venezuela or third parties that operate or are related to the shipping of Clap to Venezuela."

The program, initially conceived as part of the communal economy system, ended up as a social control mechanism through the more or less consistent distribution of food packages. It also became a juicy opportunity for private importers linked to the government of Nicolás Maduro, who created program in 2016 as his final answer to the alleged Economic War, which based on his story, was led against him by the United States of America and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.

Although the business arose prior to the sanctions imposed by USA, Canada, Switzerland and the European Union, the intermediaries chosen by the Government have been working in recent months to avoid the financial and logistics barriers that these measures entail. What seems to remain unchanged is the model of maximizing profits at the expense of consumers' health, mostly of the poorest sectors. The product supplied as milk powder in the Clap combos is a paste of zero nutritional values that does not deserve to be called milk.  

That was proved by a report published in February 2018 by Armando.Info based on the physical-chemical study conducted by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), at the request of the website, to eight brands of powdered milk distributed through the state plan in the second half of last year.

Now, eight months later, Armando.Info commissioned another physical-chemical analysis to the same research center. This time, the samples of six milk presentations were taken, all Mexican, which were the most common in the Clap combos distributed so far this year by the Government, namely, Lacto Más, Chimax, Santa Paula, Vitalac, Vilec and Vaca Milk.

None of them was analyzed in the previous study, but the results confirm the trends found at that time. The Mexican powdered milk of the Claps is a substance of variable composition that is still far from meeting the values recommended by the National Institute of Nutrition (INN) in the Table of Food Composition and in the Venezuelan Covenin 1481 standard on milk powdered.

Fraud and Malnutrition

There is hardly an improvement in the protein levels of the milk analyzed 2018 over the sample analysis of 2017. The improvement, which is insignificant and does not meet the required standards, looks even poorer if it is considered that it had to meet a requirement from the client, the Venezuelan State.

In February 2018, just two days after Armando.Info published the results of the first analysis conducted by UCV researchers, the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex), responsible for centralizing public imports in Venezuela, sent a communication to the Mexican suppliers, requiring them to "mandatorily submit to the verification company and Corpovex the Sanitary Registry and the Certificate of Free Consumption in the country of origin of all shipped food corresponding to products” for the Claps, “either as combos or loose cargo."

According to the new results of the physical-chemical analysis by UCV, four of the analyzed brands contain protein parts close to the standard value of 29 grams per 100 grams (1 oz x 3.5 oz). In fact, the package of the Chimax, Vilec, Vitalac and Santa Paula brands claim to contain 29 grams of protein, which is not entirely true, as their protein contributions range between 25.32 and 27.8 grams (0.9 – 1 oz). Lacto Más, on the other hand, is scandalously below the standard ?3.47 grams of protein per 100 grams
(0.12 oz x 3.5 oz), not even a fifth of the amount set in the Venezuelan nutritional regulations.

The actual performance of the other components of the different brands remains meager and, worst of all, covered up by deception.

For example, the packages of Lacto Más, Chimax, Santa Paula and Vitalac claim having 900 milligrams of calcium per 100 grams (0.032 oz x 3.5 oz) of product. But the physical-chemical analysis made it clear that in fact, calcium ranges between 179.63 milligrams (0.006 oz) -Lacto Más- and 527 milligrams
(0.018 oz) -Santa Paula-, which is significantly below the 949 milligrams (0.033 oz) of calcium required for whole milk powder under the Venezuelan nutritional standard. Vilec, identified as semi-skimmed, has 528 milligrams of calcium per 100 grams (0.019 oz x 3.5 oz), less than half of the 1,290 milligrams
(0.046 oz) set by the regulations for skimmed milk powder.

The difference entails that a child between two and four years of age should take more glasses of the product to meet the minimum daily requirement of calcium with milk alone. Children would need to drink 3.2 glasses of Vilec and Santa Paula milk brands and 9.3 glasses of Lacto Más, instead of the 1.8 glasses that would be enough if it were a standard whole milk. While adults would need 6.3 glasses of Santa Paula milk and up to 18.6 glasses of Lacto Más to meet their daily demand of calcium.

Pablo Hernández, professor of Human Nutrition at UCV, warns that the lack of this element can cause serious decalcifications in the future.

In addition to the low calcium detected, again, there is excess carbohydrates and sodium. In Lacto Más alone, the carbohydrate content exceeds by 215.8% what is established by the standards and, yet worse, the actual value almost doubles the one reported by the manufacturer on the label.

Sodium levels are also exorbitant. Chimax has 1,856 milligrams (0.065 oz), five times the 370.8 milligrams per 100 grams (0.013 oz x 3.5 oz) of product established in the standard. In the Santa Paula brand, the result of 1,632 milligrams (0.057 oz) quadruples the maximum amount indicated by the National Institute of Nutrition. These doses almost exceed the daily sodium intake recommended by the World Health Organization, set at less than two grams (0.070 oz).

Complaints of consumers against some of these brands are common on social media. "The Lacto Más milk that comes in the Clap is terrible. I spent two days with an acute heartburn after consuming it. I regret that Mexico is sending us this terrible milk. The corrupt people from here and there will be accountable to God for poisoning the children of Venezuela with that milk," user @joseprool tweeted on July 2.

Maritza Landaeta, research coordinator of the Bengoa Foundation and a doctor specialized in Food and Nutrition Planning, warns of the risks of excess carbohydrates among traditional consumers of milk powder in the Venezuelan homes. "This causes the child to present flatulence, a bloated stomach, pain and even vomiting and diarrhea. The same happens with die elder."

She also stresses that in a context of malnutrition, as reflected in the most recent bulletins by Cáritas Venezuela, and a greater dependence on the Clap box, these products aggravate the health situation of Venezuelans.

"Children who arrive with severe kwashiorkor or edematous malnutrition (swollen by lack of protein), or marasmatic malnutrition (skin attached to the bones for lack of calories), have among their history the ingestion of these products, which aggravate the situation because somehow they work as if the child acquired an infection, and cause diarrhea, vomiting, stomach ache, and the child rejects food and begins that vicious circle of infection and malnutrition."

Last May, the president of the National Assembly’s comptroller's office commission, Freddy Superlano, filed a complaint with the Mexican Attorney General's Office for the poor quality of the milk powder that the country exports for the Claps, but it essentially served no purpose.

Fifth and Only

One of the brands subjected to analysis ?Vaca Milk, packaged by the Mexican company B-Eminent Inc., avoids referring to its product as milk, and identify it on its packaging as a dairy product. The euphemism at least offers consumers the chance to know that it is not milk and more freedom for traders since the Venezuelan law does not provide for specific values for this type of product that may be breached. This does not mean that it is healthy though. The UCV study found that its carbohydrate content almost doubles that required for whole milk and its calcium level is the lowest of the six samples analyzed.

Vaca Milk was the product shown by the Minister of Food, Luis Alberto Medina, during a TV broadcast last June while inspecting a Clap distribution center. "We are in another center for Clap food packaging, verifying the quality of the product," he explained.

Furthermore, Vaca Milk is the only one that does not appear as produced by the same provider of the other five brands, which is somewhat surprising when considering the variety of formulas and content proportions checked about them.

"One would expect the manufacturer to have a standard formula for their product. If the products are different, you must change the labeling (...) They certainly do not produce a quality product nor do they comply with Venezuelan regulations. And it's definitely not milk," says nutritionist Pablo Hernández.

"We may not be in the presence of a milk powder factory but just a filler or packer that only buys second-class milk powder. They are not even dehydrating milk," says Rodrigo Agudo, director of the Venezuelan Institute of Milk and Meat (Invelecar).

That company, which both experts make a spoken portrait of, is known as Grupo Brandon. With their variants in quality, name and content - all equally mediocre though - the Lacto Más, Chimax, Santa Paula, Vitalac and Vilec brands belong to Grupo Brandon.

Grupo Brandon has been omnipresent in the Clap boxes sold this year. It is practically unknown in business circles in Mexico, a country with no tradition of exporting dairy products, unlike the United States of America, Holland, Argentina or New Zealand. Based on the evidence, his motto should be "Many brands and no quality."

In 2018, Grupo Brandon became the main supplier of the product for the Clap program. Their packages, which always warn that the milk is aimed "solely for distribution in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," show two addresses, and another one registered in some manifests, that lead to the state of Nuevo León, north of Mexico. In all cases, they lead to offices that have nothing to do with milk production.

That does not prevent the company from affirming on its website, "We are a 100-percent Mexican company with fifteen years of experience in the market, selling foodstuffs, mainly dairy products." The website was created last year, shortly after changing owners and right before their items began to be included in the government combos.

There are no references to the brands that it sells, but the company maintains that its mission is to offer "top-quality products at the best possible price."

The incorporation papers show that Grupo Brandon was incorporated in November 2004 and belonged to the Marcos Corella family for thirteen years. On April 5, 2017, it passed into the hands of Javier Eduardo Rodríguez de La Fuente, of barely 21 years old, and Mario Alberto Valdez Díaz, a 19-year-old teenager. Shortly after, the exports of milk to Venezuela began. Last December, Raymundo Almaguer Macías was appointed as agent of the company and the Clap business was already on track at full speed.

Christian Marcos Corella, of the family that originally controlled the company, did not answer the interview request for this report.

In the Deputy Secretariat for Health Regulation and Promotion, the agency in charge of granting the free sale certificates for the export of milk in the state of Nuevo León, are in the dark about Brandon's operations and cannot find answers to explain the increasing volume of their exports to Venezuela.

The bonanza, in which Grupo Brandon participates, is expressed in numbers. According to figures from the Ministry of Economy of Mexico, in March 2018 alone, two months before the questioned re-election of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela, Mexico exported 56 million kilograms of milk powder to the South American country, practically the same volume dispatched in total in 2017.

The Federal Attorney's Office of Consumer (Profeco) does not seem to know Grupo Brandon either. A study published last April on the quality of 23 brands of milk and dairy products sold in Mexico, does not include any of those sent to Venezuela or even one manufactured for that market by the company that has ended up monopolizing powdered milk shipments for the CLAPs.

The Usual Acquaintances

Those who do have a relationship with Grupo Brandon are Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido. Some of the companies that they control in the shade and with which they manage a good part of the food imports for the Claps are precisely those that have bought thousands of kilos of milk powder to the ghostly Mexican company and then resell it to the Venezuelan Government.   

The Santa Paula brand was imported by Salva Foods 2015, the Venezuelan company that owns the "CLAP Stores" franchise that do business in the premises of the extinct state network known as Abastos Bicentenario. Behind this is the Colombian entrepreneur Carlos Rolando Lizcano Manrique, related to Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido through Group Grand Limited, the Hong Kong-registered company that in 2017 signed at least two millionaire contracts with Maduro’s Government to provide food for the Claps.

Both the Santa Paula packages and the Importgenius records, a database specialized in international trade, reveal purchases of Salva Foods 2015 to Grupo Brandon. It is an incomprehensible operation for entrepreneurs of the Venezuelan food industry, since the owner of the CLAP Stores does not appear in any forex acquisition list to be able to import merchandise.

Neither Carlos Lizcano, nor the general manager of Salva Foods 2015, Betsy Desirée Mata Pereda, answered the interview requests for this report. Neither the national coordinator of the Clap, Freddy Bernal nor the office of the Ministry of Food offered any version.

Asasi Food FZC, registered in the United Arab Emirates and related to the business structure of the binomial of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido, also bought tons of milk powder to Grupo Brandon from late 2017 to early 2018. Asasi Food FZC is one of the companies used by Colombian entrepreneurs to replace Group Grand Limited, reported in August 2017 by as being directly related to Nicolás Maduro.

Mexican financial authorities have detected flows of hundreds of millions of dollars behind that plot: From Group Grand Limited to Mexican suppliers, and between these and Grupo Brandon and Asasi Food FZC. Apart from Mexico, this scheme is investigated by US, Colombian and Panamanian authorities.

No documents prove the selling price of powdered milk in 2018 were obtained, but in 2017, that was one of the products that increased the profits of the intermediaries. Group Grand Limited, for example, charged the Venezuelan government $ 4.75 per kilo in last year’s January, and in September, the price amounted to almost seven dollars per kilo. Other intermediaries, like M.I.R Importació I Exportació and Wellsford Trading Corp billed the kilo of powdered milk at nearly five dollars.

Statistics from the Mexican Department of Commerce indicate that from January to July 2018, almost 82 million kilos worth 70.3 million dollars were exported to Venezuela, i.e. $ 0.85 per kilo, a little more than the $ 0.5 per kilo reported in 2017. It is a sign that the business is on the rise and that intermediaries are still coming away with the lion’s share.

* This is a work researched and published simultaneously by Armando.info and the Excélsior of Mexico.

When Maduro's plan was taking off and becoming the only option for many Venezuelans to purchase staple foods in a hyperinflationary and shortage economy, the Federal Commission for the Protection Against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) - the control and consumer protection agency in Mexico -, received an avalanche of applications for licenses to send milk powder to Venezuela and other of the eleven products included in the CLAP box.

In 2017, in the headquarters of Cofepris in the state of Nuevo Leon alone, a region that concentrates exporters and numerous suppliers of CLAPs, this institution approved 33 "Free Sale Export Certificates," 32 more than in 2016. Of those approved last year, 26 were aimed for milk powder, 24 of which for Deshidratados Alimenticios e Industriales (DAI), responsible for the Macleche brand, one of the most sold in the government food combos last year.

Emilio Jacques Rivera, head of Cofepris in Nuevo León, explains that part of the job is to visit the companies to verify the information they provide. However, he admits that "sometimes, the results of an analyzed product differ just because the analysis is made with an hour or a day apart." That difference alone could explain that such a poor-quality milk has arrived in Venezuela to be consumed by the poorest.

Cofepris representatives went twice to the DAI address. April 28, 2017, was the last time, as admitted by the official. "Two samples were taken and all the results were normal," he said when interviewed by the Excélsior newspaper for this report. However, the chemical analysis of one of the MacLeche packages that came from the Port of Veracruz to that of La Guaira reveals the ineffectiveness of the controls.

Although the packaging affirms that the product contained 26 grams (0.9 oz.) of protein per 100 grams (3.5 oz), a study by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), conducted at the request of Armando.info, showed that it barely reached to 8.79 grams (0.3 oz.) of protein. Something similar occurs with the calcium intake ?a child would need to drink almost 42 glasses to cover the daily requirement of that mineral, while an adult should take 82.6 glasses. In contrast, the sodium value reached 604 milligrams, almost doubling the amount stated on the packaging and the amount recommended by the National Nutrition Institute (INN) of Venezuela.

Blaming Venezuela

In spite of the above, the official maintains that they were compliant, as the companies requested the "Free Sale Export Certificate," which obliged to verify compliance with the Mexican labeling standards only, while Venezuela had to demand a "Product Analysis Certificate" to verify the quality of some items that are mostly exclusively packaged for the program created by Maduro.

But to date, there is no proof that the Venezuelan authorities or the intermediaries that sold the merchandise to the Venezuelan Government requested the Analysis Certificate. "The food to be exported only requires the Certificates of Free Sale," Jacques Rivera insists.

On February 21, 2018,  barely three days after Armando.info revealed the poor quality of up to eight brands of Mexican milk sold in the CLAPs, the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex), a state company that centralizes public imports and negotiated the contracts for the supply of CLAPs with intermediaries, sent a letter to the Mexican suppliers stating that "it is mandatory to submit to the verification company and Corpovex the Sanitary Registry and the Certificate of Free Consumption in the country of origin of all shipped products corresponding to the Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP), either as combos or loose cargo." When the Mexican businessmen received the letter signed by Major General Giuseppe Yoffreda Yorio, the damage was done.

Almost a year earlier, on April 4, 2017, the federal office of Cofepris approved Empacadora de Alimentos Fucks S de RL de CV’s export certificate for Rancho Nuevo milk powder, and on October 7, it authorized Sólo Un Precio Servicios Inmobiliarios S. de RL de CV to sell Soy Más, a brand also exported by Value Oriented Services (VOS), to Venezuela. The nutritional information of both brands was false and their nutritional values were far from the parameters approved for consumption. Rancho Nuevo barely contained 3.82 grams of protein per 100 grams of the product, a value well below the 25.8 grams required by the Venezuelan nutritional standard or the 34 grams provided for in the Official Mexican Standard.

No Venezuelan official has made a statement on the matter, saved for Maduro, who reported irregularities last year, but gave no further details. "Once there were a few complaints here and there. We investigated them and took corrective actions because there were some poor-quality products. The corrective measures were taken immediately," said the president. The opposition deputy, Freddy Superlano, traveled to the Mexican capital and on May 14, filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office. "How is it possible that fake powdered milk produced in Mexico has marketing authorization and no one is sanctioned for such fraud?" Asks the member of the Parliament who acts as a chairman of the National Assembly’s comptroller's office commission.

Despite the diplomatic tension between Maduro's government and his counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto, figures from Mexico's Ministry of Economy reveal that Venezuela was last year’s major buyer of milk powder. The exchange amounted to 56 million kilos (over 123 million pounds) in bulk at around $ 0.5 per kilogram (2.2 lb). The milk included in the CLAP boxes, was in turn billed to the Venezuelan Government by intermediaries like Group Grand Limited at 4.75 dollars per kilo, in January 2017, and at 6.95 dollars per kilo eight months later. Others like Wellsford Trading Corp billed it at just over $ 4 per kilo, while M.I.R Importació I Exportació billed it at almost $ 5 per kilo. 

This year, bulk shipments decreased. In the first four months, just over 2 million 100 thousand kilograms were exported, but from January to May, about twenty shipments left from Mexican ports to Venezuela, loaded with millions of CLAP boxes that were distributed by the Government before the presidential election of May 20. Those batches included new brands of milk powder. "We are in another food packaging center for the CLAPs. We are verifying the quality of the products included in the boxes. This is the milk." said the Minister of Food, Luis Medina Ramírez, on June 8, through his Twitter account, while exhibiting a pack of Vaca Milk, manufactured by B-Eminent Inc of Mexico.

In 2017, that company packaged the Vital Milk brand, which despite of being among the ones showing the best nutritional values in the chemical test, was also far from fully complying with the Venezuelan nutritional standard. Children need 17.6 glasses of that milk to cover their daily demand for calcium, while adults need 35.1 glasses.

This year, the food combos from Mexico also included presentations by Brandon Group, an unknown firm in the Mexican dairy industry that gave false nutritional information and even a false address on the packaging of the Lacto Mas and Suprema brands. It may be a sign that Mexico continues sending "bad milk" for Venezuela’s CLAPs.

*This article was prepared in cooperation with the Mexican Excelsior newspaper

From as early as 2004, the Consumer Protection Federal Agency (Profeco), one of the federal agencies in Mexico dealing with consumers’ right, have been warning that some brands of milk show problems in commercial information or bear misleading and deceptive legends. In 2006, through the Ministry of Economy, Profeco revealed that 400 brands of dairy products cheated consumers by offering soy or rice drinks as milk. Already in 2008, the agency imposed large fines on more than a hundred brands and banned the sale of four million products.

"Profeco makes verifications every day through the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for Verification - which this laboratory is attached to - and the Verification and Supervision Department. We verify the different points of sale. If there are irregularities concerning the components, a report is made, and based on that, an administrative process takes place in the form of a trial, and if the irregularity is proved, a fine is imposed," explains Engels Ruelas Olvera, General Director of the National Laboratory of Profeco.

In fact, one of the companies that appear as vendors of the Venezuelan CLAP program, Deshidratados Alimenticios e Industriales (DAI), was awarded dozens of contracts from 2012 to 2016 by the Mexican federal government to provide milk to social programs such as "Apadrina a un niño indígena" (Sponsor a indigenous child)," Despensas discapacitados" (Pantries for the Disabled),"Pequeños en movimiento" (Growing children), and "Creciendo sanos" (Healthy Growing), among others.

On May 15, 2017, the Health Ministry of the State of that entity, through the Federal Commission for the Protection Against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris), gave DAI, registered in the state of Nuevo León, a certificate of free sale and export to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

By that time, massive purchases of food from Mexican companies had skyrocketed thanks to at least two intermediaries from the Venezuelan government, namely, Group Grand Limited, a company linked to Colombian businessman Alex Saab, who Luisa Ortega Díaz, the Public Prosecutor removed from office, directly linked to Nicolás Maduro, or Postar Intertrade Limited, a company registered in Barbados and owned by Venezuelan businessman Samark López, whom the US Treasury Department describes as the "front man" of the Vice President of the Republic, Tareck El Aissami.

DAI is the producer of the Mac Leche brand, "the one with the red cow", as the Venezuelan consumers refer to in allusion to its emblem and logo. Among the eight brand samples analyzed by the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) - at the request of Armando.info -, collected from September to December 2017, that is the one with the worst nutritional profiles. Although the package affirms that it contains 26 grams (0.91 oz) of protein per 100 grams (3.52 oz) of product, the chemical analysis of UCV found that it barely reached 8.79 grams (0.31 oz), a fraction of a quarter of the reference intake established by the Venezuelan Government through its regulatory agencies. In the laboratory, Mac Leche had a proportion of sodium that doubles the quantity indicated on the packaging, which is, by the way, the maximum allowed by national and international milk standards. This characteristic produces the salty taste that consumers often complain about in social media and that is already part of the image
- probably undesired - of the brand.

These distortions alone already violate two Mexican standards, NOM-155-SCFI-2012 that establishes among the nutritional properties of milk a minimum of 34 grams (1.19 oz) of proteins per liter, and NOM-051-SCFI/SSA1-2010 establishing that the label information "must be true and be described and presented in such a way as not to mislead the consumer regarding the nature and characteristics of the product."

However, business opportunities in Venezuela are so attractive that DAI, in addition to its retail participation in the CLAP combos with the Mac Leche brand, appears delivering from October to November 2017 shipments of around 2,100 tons of powdered milk for the Venezuelan state corporation Sole Corporation of Productive and Food Services (Cuspal), attached to the Ministry of Food, based on the records of Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state, the country's main port. The Mac Leche brand was so broadly recognized among low purchasing power consumers, beneficiaries of the welfare programs of the Government of Nicolás Maduro, that during some months of 2017, DAI had to coexist with another brand of milk, a “me too” that openly tried to imitate the colors, name and visual identity of Mac Leche.

DAI’s legal representative Jaime H. García was contacted, but by the time this report was closed, he had not clarified the disparity between the information reported on the labels by the company and the UCV analysis, nor the case of the counterfeit of the product. Neither did the Cofepris Mexican authorities offer their version about the irregularities.

Ghostly Milking

The singularity of the DAI - Mac Leche case is that it is a company and a brand that operate both in the Mexican and Venezuelan markets openly and simultaneously. Most CLAP dairy substitutes are produced by companies with unknown histories and through brands like Lacto Más and Suprema, which are not even sold in the supermarket networks of Mexico and are exclusively produced for Venezuela.

Both Lacto Más and Suprema are packaged by Grupo Brandon, an unknown company in the Mexican food industry. Anyone who follows the address reflected in the packaging of both brands will arrive at a house in Colonia del Valle, San Pedro, Garza García, in Nuevo León. But there operates another company, the representatives of which say they have nothing to do with milk production or processing. The chemical analysis of UCV made to the Supreme brand milk reveals that this product barely contains 4.7 grams (0.16 oz) of protein per 100 grams (3.52 oz) instead of the 29 grams (1.02 oz) reflected on the label, and only 115.33 milligrams (0.0040 oz) of calcium, well below the 900 milligrams (0.0031 oz) that it offers. An inscription on the packaging reads, "To be distributed in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” Despite this, the CLAP business for Grupo Brandon seems to be booming. Recently, the Santa Paula brand arrived in Venezuela, also packed by the company.

Something similar to Grupo Brandon occurs with Dilac, responsible for the production of KF Milk and Pure Milk, both also analyzed by UCV. Both brands prefer to identify themselves as "fortified dairy products" instead of as milk. But this barely perceptible transparency ends there. At the alleged offices of the company, they said they did not know those brands. It is a dairy company, but it does not export products to the Mexican market.

Since the beginning of the CLAPs, no Venezuelan official has explained why these barely known Mexican companies or the intermediaries that have ended up buying that merchandise were chosen.