The iceberg begins to emerge. Odebrecht admits to American authorities that it distributed bribes in twelve international markets, including Venezuela, where most bribes were paid: 98 million US dollars in bribes and kickbacks. At least 35 million of all that money was contributed by the civil engineering company to the last electoral campaign of Hugo Chávez. In court declarations, an informer speaks of under-the-table payments of at least US$ 600,000 in the name of company Andrade Gutierrez. This is just the beginning of the revelations.
The investor, now exiled in the United States, seized the company in the vertiginous 2009, the year of the banking mini-crisis. By an intricate operation of legal and financial engineering through Panama, with Spanish advisers and some 'shelf companies', he made sure that the purchase would produce profits even if his property was expropriated and he was forced to flee abroad.
Sometimes intermediary, others, supplier, but always omnipresent, this Venezuelan is one of the most active and unknown person in the registration of companies in tax havens of the Caribbean. Many of these companies were incorporated ad hoc to do business with Corporación Casa, a food import state entity.
