Cristóbal Jiménez's obsequious ballad honoring Maisanta, the ancestor of the late President Hugo Chávez, has a title that fits the stories of Diego Pérez Henao, once one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers, who had his hideout in a small ranch in the state of Barinas. The estate emerges as one of the best kept secrets. Several sources agree that the founder of the Norte Del Valle cartel (Valley's North cartel) was untouchable within the boundaries that belonged to Israel Ramón Chávez Aro, a relative of the Bolivarian chieftain.
As if it were a novel series, the biggest corruption plot from Brazil involves a senior Venezuelan official, nothing less than the national head of state. But the Prosecutor's Office is silent. Although distanced from the government, Luisa Ortega Díaz ignored the issue, despite the fact that her counterparts had already notified her about the case.
Under Hugo Chávez, two women represented Venezuela in dealings with China to obtain project finance: banker Edmée Betancourt and diplomat Rocío Maneiro. These are their stories.
Venezuela sought to build an appliance factory to manufacture white goods for all homes by 2025. It ended up importing them from the factory funder itself: China’s Haier.
New leaks of the "award-winning delation" that the construction company's proconsul in Caracas, Euzenando Azevedo, made to Brazilian justice last December reveal that in the elections to choose the successor to the late commander Hugo Chávez, Odebrecht made a Solomonic decision: to reach an understanding with the candidates of the Government and the Opposition and make contributions to the campaigns of both. It would not be on an equal footing: one was given $35 million, the other $15 million. But with the same consideration for both: that the public works contracts in charge of the multinational engineering company had to be respected.
In order to control the new four-legged threat, even hunting parties in helicopter have had to be organized. But these dog packs, which have already made the countryside their territory, now besiege the southernmost urban centers of Argentina, from where they initially escaped in most cases. While there are already reports of attacks against people in the city of Ushuaia, several ideas to face the problem have been proposed.
These far ends of glaciers and fjords, that once enchanted Darwin and Chatwin, Theroux and Hudson, have become the setting for postapocalyptic sceneries in which packs of feral dogs not only prey the local fauna and the cattle but also attack people. These dogs’ fangs have contributed, as much as the crisis, to decimate the traditional sheep cattle sector both sides of the international border between Argentina and Chile across Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost land ever colonized by man.
Those in Venezuela are jurists that have revolving doors. Sooner or later they have been deputies, ministers or representatives of Bolivarian associations. This report presents the conclusions of a work of data journalism that crosses the names of all the country's criminal judges with the lists of the government party, and therefore indicates that 40% of them are of chavista militancy. Among the most prominent in this case are acolytes who condemned political prisoners like Araminta González and even the first lady’s son, Walter Gavidia Flores, who was in charge of a court until 2014.
A handshake between Hugo Chávez and Jiang Zemin, President of China, sealed a commercial relationship between Caracas and Beijing that totals two decades of cooperation marked by thousands of dollars and debts, half efficiency, and much opacity. Now, hundreds of official documents obtained by Armando.info and processed together with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) reveal, through a series of stories, how this exchange flowed, which was not always advantageous for Venezuela.
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