Five Trinitarian Muslims lived a nightmare in the coolest destination in the world. When they traveled to Caracas to process the visa required to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, they were detained by the political police on terrorism charges. They spent two years, six months and 25 days in the cells of Sebin (Bolivarian National Intelligence Service). Then, and to not acknowledge the error of imputing five innocent persons, the judge issued a penalty equal to the time they were locked up. The solution does not return the lost time to five foreigners who lived through the tragedy of dealing with the perverse and ineffective Judiciary created by chavismo.
In Venezuela, less than fifty military officers are entrusted the mission of administering justice to their military counterparts. But as the Government of Nicolás Maduro sends more political dissidents and insubordinate civilians to be tried in that jurisdiction the weakest flanks of a lodge of judges arbitrarily appointed by the Ministry of Defense, who have unclear merits and a clear willingness to follow orders, are more evident.
Facing the innovations of Pope Francis, the Church in Venezuela is not monolithic. The only Venezuelan Cardinal, Jorge Urosa Savino, has been exposed as a dissident of the reforms coming from Rome. His stance divides the clergy and leaves the conservative side in bad position for his succession as Archbishop of Caracas. At the same time, paradoxically, they reinforce the progressive sector of a church that until now has acted as a containment wall against Chavismo.
The member of the US Cabinet, Wilbur Ross, is one of the owners of a company that provides maritime transport services to Pdvsa, a client that in 2015 contributed over 11 percent of the profits to his shipping company. Although the official had to get rid of his mercantile properties to hold his position, he kept a participation in that line of business through a complex offshore structure in the Cayman Islands. Thus, he did not only do business with chavista Venezuela, but also with an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both countries are subject to economic sanctions by Washington.
The last two major global investigations conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed the offshore business of Eligio Cedeño, a former Venezuelan banker considered a fugitive from justice by some and politically persecuted by others. Company Cedel International Investment, owner of Bolívar Banco and Banpro, also requested the services of Mossack Fonseca to operate in the British Virgin Islands.
The name of the former head of the Venezuelan oil company in Colombia appears in the papers of Mossack Fonseca with 100% of the shares of a company created in June 2011, of which she requested to be dissolved six months later. She is unemployed since August 2015, when she was replaced by the ex-sister-in-law of President Nicolás Maduro
The so-called "insurance tsar" opened four offshore companies in a Caribbean island through the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Corporación OFL, which consists of about 20 companies in his name, makes him one of the entrepreneurs in the insurance sector that has grown the most during the chavista government.
The ex-banker used the services of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to register companies in tax havens while he was being tried in Venezuela by his ex-colleagues from the Stanford Group. He said he was a victim of chavism to be accepted as a client and thus protect his fortune.
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
