A Venezuelan executive jet, listed as suspicious by the United States, landing in a remote African capital… A group of passengers that includes special operations agents and stay in a military barracks… A mysterious Russian transport plane… A ship anchored by a paradise island… These are the wicks used in recent days to woven a web that is at par with a spy series. The mission was to assess the likelihood of rescuing Colombian businessman and alleged front man for Nicolas Maduro from his imprisonment in the neighboring Cape Verde archipelago, before his extradition to the United States. This happened just a month after his arrest.
Every Venezuelan court must be made up by a judge, a secretary and a bailiff. One of the members of this tripod, as to the court in charge of the case of the Justice First party deputy, is usurping functions since he does not meet the requirements to hold the position. That automatically invalidates that instance. This is the most recent legal irregularity in this case, where not all officials sign their acts, lawyers do not know the file, and the Constitution has been openly violated.
Neither the revolutionary commander of Venezuela, nor the charismatic president Lula of Brazil, but the senior staff of the construction company turned into the Major Elector when the Brazilian Senate had to vote on the incorporation of Caracas into the trading bloc. Based on the transcripts of the Lava Jato case, Marcelo Odebrecht personally led the lobbying campaign aimed to break the three-year blockage that prevented the entry of the Chavista regime into the club. The operation included the recruitment of three key Senators from the Workers' Party, as allies.
Their faces have not appeared in any public manifestation portrayed in any banner, or brochures, or in social media. Their names were sentenced by someone with "revolutionary authority" that involved them in a case without conclusive evidence, even with assumptions that even though they were dismantled, that was worth little or nothing to reverse the aim, i.e. to criminalize the protest, frighten the protesters, leave someone behind bars. The official discourse that is determined to ensure that there are only political prisoners in Venezuela does not fit to them. These are ordinary Venezuelans who have ended up as political prisoners, particularly as forgotten political prisoners.
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 Government of Nicolás Maduro gave China the large-scale manufacture of the Venezuelan cuatro (four in English, as it has four strings). The policy of mass production of the instrument, with the purpose of adding it to the well-known National System of Children and Youth Orchestras, created by José Antonio Abreu, has prevailed over the quality entailed in its handcrafted frame. It is not, as it seems, just a cultural resignation or a contradiction with the nationalist discourse of the historical comrades of the self-styled Bolivarian revolution. Each unit manufactured in the Far East is a business for importers and ends up costing almost the same as the guitar manufactured in the country.
Without leaving a trace, José María Olazagasti, the obscure lieutenant of the Kirchnerist Minister of Planning, Julio De Vido, disappeared. Olazagasti, from the shadow, and De Vido, in public, both were the architects of the golden age of trade agreements between the Pink House and the Miraflores Palace. Most of these deals show no visible work, and some of them are the starting points of legal cases that begin to spread around in Argentina. The personal secretary was the one who managed with whom to meet and for what business.
A contagious disease has reappeared in Venezuela. After 24 years of being considered eradicated, the inhabitants of the south of the country are experiencing a diphtheria outbreak of hitherto incalculable scales. Minister of Health Luisana Melo has recognized as official medical report only two deaths out of the four cases confirmed by her office until October 11. But several death certificates, collected in situ by Armando.info, indicate that the number of deaths is higher.
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.
Read serie
