Nuñez de Balboa street runs parallel to the luxurious Serrano, the Champs-Elysees of the Spanish capital, both being separated by only four blocks of distance. It is the heart of Salamanca, the centric neighborhood of Madrid that’s being gentrified once again with the money brought in by a new wave of wealthy Venezuelan migrants. Up until the surge of the coronavirus pandemic, an apartment in the building on Núñez de Balboa 77 would be worth around two million euros.

But José Trinidad Márquez has already left this part of the city, where the well-off Venezuelans and the most exclusive brands started settling down. Although we could not trace him to try to interview him for this story, one could come to a conclusion that he must’ve had good incentives to leave a location that holds such a privileged life: fresh money to spend and an inquiry from the justice authorities. In fact, his apartment on Núñez de Balboa was raided by petition of the Portuguese judicial authorities.

Overnight, in the eyes of the tribunals and the press in Lisbon, the 66-year old Caracas native has transformed into the most colorful member of the cast of characters involved in the plot of the bankruptcy and intervention of the major Portuguese financial entity, the Espirito Santo Bank (BES). 

This past 15th of July, after six years of investigation, the Portuguese prosecution office finally presented it´s accusation documents regarding the case. The file consists of more than 4000 folios which try to decipher the complexity of the fraudulent tissue that the high management of BES, led by its president Ricardo Salgado – famous in Portugal by the acronym DDT (short for Owner Of Everything in Portuguese) – has thread for years in order to cover up the holes in the bank’s balances. The facts reported by the Public Ministry are succulent, but the narrative can turn a bit tedious in between the details of financial engineering, debt papers operations and corporate governance entities.    

For the laypersons, however, the voluminous file hides eight pages of mischief: the bizarre story of how Salgado recruits, through an intermediary, a professional con man, José Trinidad Márquez, to impersonate a high official of PDVSA for some of Salgado’s colleagues and BES executives, who allegedly came from Caracas to offer the management of the afflicted bank – which by then, March 2014, was already in the final days before the bankruptcy and the quest for liquidity was frantic – to fix a bidding for an investment fund of the Venezuelan state oil company, in exchange for the payment of certain expenses. Márquez played his part to perfection and with the move earned himself a reward of 4,5 million euros, while Espirito Santo didn’t take much longer to definitely collapse in August of 2014.

Within the reach of anyone without strong financial knowledge, reading about this episode is delicious and captivating. It looks like a draft version of a screenplay for a Hollywood film about classic con artists, the likes of 1973 picture The Sting, or the 2013 American Hustle, in which the wit and cleverness the con artists put in play to make their victims fall for the decoy, conquer equally the sympathy of the audiences. Not in vain, the Portuguese press rushed to spread the story in numerous front pages, without pondering that the invisible Márquez – there are barely any photos of him – probably wouldn’t end up looking as appealing as Robert Redford or Christian Bale.

What the Portuguese media overlooked is that Márquez is not only a con artist that has turned deception of people into a way of life. In fact, since the 1990-ies he has accumulated an international criminal record, which now includes Portugal too: he has been trialed in the United States, Spain and Venezuela, at least. In all those jurisdictions he has been sentenced, with awarded prison time in the two latter. He has always come out unhurt. How he manages to serve only short prison terms, go back to his con ways, and maintain a lifestyle of the rich and the famous, just by pretending he is a petroleum expert, constitutes an adventure of more than two decades that can only be explained by a certain resilience founded on a probable pathological tendency.   

Catch me if you can

In January of 1998 El País daily from Madrid included an information in its Local news section titled: “Detained when trying to fraud Astilleros Españoles (Spanish Shipyards) for 250.000 million”. The then reporter of the Spanish newspaper, Jan Martínez Ahrens, with a hint of admiration, follows the adventure and the final capture of the “man with thousand faces” who “without even having finished high school, managed to supposedly make fools out of companies such as Cooper Rolls, from Ohio; Icec, from New York; Intel Chemical Co., from Tulsa, and Lewag, from Vienna”. In the opening paragraphs he baptizes him as The Golden Middleman and when he finally identifies him as the Venezuelan José Trinidad Márquez, he assures that “above all the search and capture warrants for him, he flew from one capital city to the next one offering the big business deal”.

Back in those days Márquez used to pretend he was either the vice-president of Pdvsa, Pablo Reimpell, the second in charge after Luis Giusti, or as an emissary of Reimpell himself. In that capacity, with the assistance of forged documentation – after his arrest, when raiding the room he used to stay in at the traditional hotel Plaza Princesa, close to La Moncloa, they found paperwork and seals with the mark of Pdvsa and the Venezuelan Ministry of Energy and Mines – he managed to persuade the Astilleros Españoles (Spanish Shipyards) company, at the time a mixed venture whose specialty was the construction of tankers, that he was facilitating the acquisition of 26 ships for the value of 1.65 billion dollars: a dream contract. To make sure that the Spanish company does get the order, Márquez asked for an 800.000 dollars commission for himself.

Márquez presented a forged check issued by swiss bank UBS to his Spanish negotiating partners, for the value of 30% of the total amount of the contract as a guarantee, and the operation was closed with a word bond.

At the moment the executives of Astilleros Españoles haven’t entrusted anyone the due diligence task to investigate their counterpart, that maybe would have let them find out that, just a couple of months prior, in October 1997, Vitol, the largest independent petroleum trader on the global markets outside of the state companies and the mythical seven sisters, had just introduced a lawsuit against José Trinidad Márquez in a Miami tribunal. The company, of Dutch origin but with a legal personality in Switzerland, demanded a 3,75 million dollars compensation from Márquez for “breach of contract”.

According to the lawsuit introduced before the 11th Tribunal in the Civil court of Miami-Dade County, in Florida, between the months of May and June 1996 Márquez has deployed a modus operandi which in time will be established as a sort of watermark of his subsequent set-ups: he had said that, because of his contacts in the Venezuelan oil company, he was in a position to negotiate a contract in which Pdvsa would ship 120.000 barrels of crude daily to Vitol, in a stable manor and with favorable conditions. He had shown Pdvsa credentials and he even went to meetings accompanied by some supposed executives of the Venezuelan company, which at the end won over Vitol’s confidence. The company agreed to sign a contract with Márquez and pay him a commission of 5 million dollars. On the 5th of June 1996, Vitol transferred 3,75 million dollars to an account in the name of José Trinidad Márquez in the swiss bank Vonbotel, an entity that would curiously be mentioned years later in press versions as one of the pipelines of chavismo black money laundering. This quantity was only the first installment of the fee promised to Márquez, as the entire amount would be completed when Vitol received the first shipment, something that, as expected, never came to happen.

At the time Márquez had his yacht La Marquesita (Little Marquise), baptized with the same name as the house he used to live in years before in the exclusive southeastern Caracas neighborhood of Cerro Verde, moored in a Miami marina. This fact and some other relations that Márquez kept with Florida motivated Vitol to lodge the lawsuit precisely in Florida’s jurisdiction, where by motion of the defense the process was ascended to the Federal Court of the Southern District. Márquez, on the other hand, had his residence fixed in Houston, Texas. Luxurious offices in the NationsBank building in the city were part of the paraphernalia José Trinidad Márquez had constructed in order to show off a patina of credibility to his petro trader facade.    

None of this was known by the authorities of Astilleros Españoles at the time of arranging the payment of an 800.000 dollars commission for Márquez, a sum for which he would secure an order of 26 tankers for Pdvsa. But the suspicion wouldn’t leave them in the lurch. They noticed in Márquez a certain rush to sign, as well as some “suspicious commentaries”, according to a story by El País. So, they reached out to the Pdvsa hierarchy, the company for which they had previously built four tankers.

Márquez almost got away with his play. Captured and referred to the prosecution office on 23rd of January 1998, he still had some mitigating circumstances playing to his favor, that would eventually lead to a more lenient sentence from the Spanish judiciary: he hadn’t cashed in the commission to complete the felony and he also didn’t have previous criminal record. Spain decided to deport him to Venezuela, where other dues with justice were waiting. 

Internship in El Junquito

The only photograph of José Trinidad Márquez one could find in the archives for the purpose of this report was published on the second page of Siete Dias (Seven Days), the Sunday supplement of the El Nacional daily from Caracas, in it’s 23rd of August of 1998 edition. He can be seen in what appears like the surrounding area of the headquarters of the former Policía Técnica Judicial (Judicial Technical Police or PTJ; today known as Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigation Force – CICPC; equivalent to a police unit assisting the public prosecutor office in other countries), on the centric Plaza Carabobo of the Venezuelan capital. Thick black mustache, designer round-shaped glasses, double-breasted jacket in dark fabric that could be linen: anyone would take him for a high management executive of one of the State’s companies. He is surrounded by a fence of TV news microphones and tape recorders that reporters use to gather his statements. Although his name will again reappear in media, maybe this is the only time his face illuminates the prime time on TV screens (something without a doubt inconvenient for his trade as a con artist).

As it happens, when Astilleros Españoles inquired Pdvsa about the credentials Márquez had shown them at the beginning of the year, other stories involving the character surfaced to the ground. The most important being: he was wanted by the justice in Venezuela to answer accusations of issuing checks without funds, benefiting as a functionary – hence the penal charges – and the use of fake stamps.  

In one case, Márquez, presenting himself as Pablo Reimpell, had defrauded Linde AG, a German company in the field of industrial gases by-products of oil, for the amount of 3,5 million German marks (DM) and 3,5 million dollars. Both sums were part of the payment of commissions to Márquez-Reimpell, promised by the Germans in exchange for being granted the multimillion dollar project to construct an ethylene plant in the then still embryonic Cryogenic Complex of Jose, on the coast of Anzoátegui state, in northwestern Venezuela.  

In a second case, Márquez pretended he was an emissary of Frank Alcock and Claus Graf, in those days the vice-president and the director of Pdvsa, respectively. In such quality, Márquez would convince the management of Stone & Webster, a US civil engineering projects company with headquarters in Massachusetts that would later be taken over by Westinghouse, that they could obtain the contract for the construction of the olefin plant at the same industrial complex in Anzoátegui. Stone & Webster agreed to pay Márquez’s intermediation with a commission worth 1,2 million dollars. Marquez’s audacity reached such a point that by mid – 1994 he didn’t have any embarrassment to join two representatives of the American company, Michael Pears and James Holt, at a presentation of their catalogue of services orchestrated in the very office of Claus Graf at the main Pdvsa headquarters in the La Campiña neighborhood, in the north of Caracas. It was only a couple of months later, when the American executives presented Graf with a contract – forged – for the construction of the olefin plant bearing his signature – apocryphal - , that it became obvious to all the parties included that they’ve been victims of an expensive elaborate scam.

Upon returning to Caracas in February of 1998, after being deported from Spain, José Trinidad Márquez had a swift trial. Maybe even too swift. Also, too soft.

The head judge of the 43rd Tribunal in penal matters, Norma Hernández de Arteaga, sentenced him to one year, five months and ten days of prison. Considering the seriousness of the committed felony, the sentence seemed rather light. Maybe channeling the voice of her expert sources, the reporter that signed the El Nacional story published that Sunday in August 1998, Albor Rodríguez, enumerated all the subtractions in the penalty and the procedural benefits that the judge had applied in order to cut the sentence short.

The journalist also revealed the privileges being afforded to Márquez at the center where he served his sentence, the so-called Retén Judicial de El Junquito (Judicial Remand Prison in El Junquito), on the outskirts of Caracas. For a while he was placed in a room at the administrative building of the penitentiary, where he had a queen size bed, computer, microwave oven, two phone landlines and a refrigerator. He would receive visitations at any hour of any day, and he tended guests on the terrace of the director of the prison. When the director was dismissed and they wanted to discipline Márquez, he was relocated to the best cell of the Pavilion H, a VIP enclosure where not long ago before they lodged Ramiro Helmeyer, the yuppie financier that had conducted a short campaign of sending envelope bombs in 1993, during the rule of the provisional government of the historian Ramón J. Velásquez.      

It seemed as Márquez had the means to buy himself favors. Whether with influences or not, the fact is that he was able to leave Venezuelan captivity and reappear in 2003 in Texas. At that moment he requested the protection of a tribunal in the city of Austin, the state’s capital, to declare bankruptcy, a protection that lasted up until 2008. It should’ve been a dark chapter in his career. But if he had to live with defeats and hardship then, it wouldn’t be long before he makes up for the lost time.  

Setback in Madrid

In March of 2009 he appeared at the central offices of Técnicas Reunidas (United Technics) in Madrid – a corporation specializing in the construction of infrastructure for the hydrocarbon industry, part of the IBEX index of the 35 largest Spanish companies – a man claiming he was the emissary of Rafael Ramírez Carreño, the all-powerful president of Pdvsa and minister of energy in the government of Hugo Chávez. The character, accompanied by other individuals, asserted that the ministry, in the middle of the prolonged drought that at the time was devastating Venezuela and that a year later would lead the commander of the revolution to issue an electrical emergency decree, was set out to build a thermoelectric power station with a combined cycle in the coastal region of the country. According to the visitor, the Venezuelan state had 210 million euros to invest in the construction. In the name of Rafael Ramírez, he could make assurances that the substantial contract would be assigned to Técnicas Reunidas. In exchange, as El Pais daily would later recount, “he requested different quantities of money in Venezuelan currency (bolívar) and in euros in order to organize the trip to Spain, the rental vehicles and his stay in Madrid”.

No need to say it was José Trinidad Márquez.

He made a third party call the Spanish ambassador to Caracas at the time, Dámaso de Lario Ramírez, and, acting as if he was Rafael Ramirez, confided to him that he had delegated Márquez as his representative and gave him authority to decide the awarding of the contract. But just to be clear: the transaction has to be confidential and no other executive of Pdvsa or the Venezuelan government should have any knowledge of it. 

With his sophistry, José Trinidad Márquez obtained a first allocation of 350.000 euros from Técnicas Reunidas, and after that a check for 1,3 million euros, both of them paid in the spring of 2009. But as soon as the directors of the Spanish company realized that the promised payment of 210 million euros wasn’t ever arriving from Venezuela, they denounced Márquez to the authorities. The investigating judge managed to freeze one of the bank accounts of the Venezuelan which had deposits of 350.000 euros, and then acted with sufficient speed to prevent Márquez from cashing the check. 

The trial started in October of 2011 in the Province court of Madrid. Even though the prosecution asked for four years of imprisonment for the convict, the verdict, that came in April of 2012, ordered two years of prison for the accused for the felonies of fraud and forging a private document. The mitigating circumstances came to Márquez’s help yet again: he didn’t have a criminal record in Spain – he wasn’t trialed for the deception of Astilleros Españoles in 1998 – so he accepted his punishment without a word.

At the time of publishing this story we weren’t able to verify if Márquez did serve his sentence and, if that was the case, where was he locked up. In March of 2016 a Tribunal in Caracas granted his divorce from Bety Haydee Jakson, who has been his wife since 1979. The sentence quotes a notarized power from October 2014 that certifies Márquez as a resident of Madrid at the time. According to information, he also had the liberty to travel abroad that same year. Because between April and May of 2014, when barely completing the two years of the tribunal sentence for the fraud to Técnicas Reunidas, Márquez was in Lisbon at least two times to complete his master stroke.

Master stroke

José Trinidad Márquez isn´t the only Venezuelan mentioned in the cast of characters of the so-called Case Espirito Santo, a name too simple to understand the sophisticated scheme of maneuvers and financial products that Ricardo Salgado and his team, with the consent of its principal shareholders, implemented for years from the highest management in order to cover their insolvency without stopping big payoff days for themselves. It seems striking that the document presented by the Portuguese prosecutors this last July, which leads to accusation of twelve individuals and five organizations of diverse crimes, includes two segments entirely dedicated to the relations the financial group had with Venezuela.

These connections go back as far as 2008 when – as the prosecution explains – a delegation of Portuguese businessman accompanied prime minister José Sócrates on an official state visit to Caracas. Ricardo Salgado came along with the group. And, while up until then Espirito Santo had been acting as a financier for Portuguese companies such as GALP oil company or Caixa Geral de Depósitos starting business ventures in Venezuela, from that precise moment they found the chavista administration to be a solution for the chronic liquidity problems caused by the bank’s imprudent management. 

If between 2009 and 2014 somehow Espirito Santo and its immense fleet of subsidiaries maintained themselves afloat, it was largely due to plugging the huge holes in their balances with wads of Venezuelan petrodollars. Salgado’s management was able to persuade diverse organisms of the Venezuelan State – most significantly Pdvsa, but also Fonden or the development bank Bandes among others – to, primarily, entrust BES with functions of the Treasury; then, to invest in debt papers issued by the group; almost simultaneously, to appoint BES as the guarantor of Venezuela’s purchases of goods and services abroad, principally through Bariven.

Each one of these functions implied an injection of liquid cash to the coffers of BES. For example, according to data from the Portuguese Attorney General´s office, between 2008 and 2014 various entities of the Venezuelan State invested something over 3,1 billion dollars in securities papers of the financial group. 

Of course, these massive investments were made not precisely as result of the impeccable quality of client service that Espirito Santo provides. On top of a certain amount of ingenuity and carelessness on part of the Venezuelan authorities, the systematic payment of bribes also resulted decisive for the hierarchy in the chavista administration, so they averted the flow of money towards the Portuguese bank. The bribes were circulating through an entangled capillarity of offshore companies which the prosecutors have been studying for years and which they finally decided to set aside from the main trial, and pack it all up under the name Investigation GES/Venezuela/Switzerland/Dubai/Macao. As a result of this investigation, a surge of a new accusation is expected, one that would point out various bank executives and Venezuelan citizens such as Nervis Villalobos, Rafael Reiter, Rita González, Luis Carlos de León, Abraham Shiera, Roberto Rincón and César Rincón, under the presumption of having committed felonies as “criminal association, corruption in detriment of the international trade, corruption in the private sector, falsifying documents and money laundering”.

Even so, in the main case of BES, upon which the prosecution focused all the evidence regarding administrative irregularities, transgressions of regulation, and financial manipulation collected during the investigation, the story of José Trinidad Márquez still holds.

Before the prosecution presented the formal accusation in Lisbon last July, Márquez had been mentioned in leaks to the Spanish press as a member of a money laundering network for Pdvsa that has been criminally denounced in a Madrid tribunal by a law firm hired by the Interim Government of Juan Guaidó, or as a part of a bribe payment scheme of the aforementioned Banco Espirito Santo.

But the truth is Márquez is added to the case as a result of what could only be seen as a true labor of selection and recruitment of talent.

At the beginning of 2014, the circumstance in which the Espirito Santo group found itself was desperate. The large gap in the balance kept widening and the Venezuelan manna was coming in short supply. And not only that: under the pressure of its own insolvency and the European and Portuguese regulators, the BES had undertaken some initiatives to restructure that, paradoxically, sounded the first alarm bell for the debt owners in Caracas. They didn’t like being exposed for the leniency with which they had managed Venezuelan public funds, in case of a scandalous collapse of BES. So, they demanded the bank reimburse some of the bonds that were reaching maturity and replace the rest of its positions with papers from another of its subsidiaries, only seemingly more solid. 

Since Salgado didn’t have any money to fulfill the first request coming from Venezuela, he arranged to take care of it along with the second one through the issue of new debentures for the value of almost 300 million dollars in the name of it’s subsidiary Rioforte del Espirito Santo. But trying to do so he fell over an unexpected obstacle: the resistance of his colleagues from the management of the subsidiary, who maintained that, given the level of restricted liquidity of the company, weren’t in conditions to generate further debt. They refused to approve the new commitment.

Then, Salgado developed a set up that should be an essential part of the universal annals of corporate fraud. He instructed the head of international business of the BES office in Madeira, Joao Alexandre Silva, in charge of the Venezuelan agenda for a long time, to act as a headhunter and try to recruit an impostor. The winner of the fraudster casting was, of course, José Trinidad Márquez.

Since then and during the months of April and May of 2014, by request of Salgado and Silva, the Caracas native Márquez would be known as Domingo Galán Macías, pretend boss of an inexistent Division of Engineering at Pdvsa. Márquez – Galán assured people he was a Spanish citizen with a residence in Caracas, owner of the DNI 70030366X (which in effect belongs to a doormen of a certain building in Madrid, with the same name, who denounced the theft of his identification document to the police authorities). 

Márquez, now in character as Galán, told the executives of Rioforte / Espirito Santo that he was an emissary of Rafael Ramírez and he was baring a good news for them: Pdvsa was just about to announce a tender for the management of an investment fund worth 3.5 billion dollars, whose outcome could be manipulated in favor of BES. Furthermore: the provisions of the fund would be designed in a manor that 20% of it, some 700 million dollars, could be invested in the bank’s debt, a miraculous option which, in translation, spelled salvation for the group. They would only have to pay a commission for Márquez, in order to make this dream reality. 

And even though some of the executives participating in said meetings with José Trinidad Márquez, aka Domingo Galán Macías, were estranged that the Venezuelan intermediary showed little interest when they were presenting him the technical information, they still conceded credibility to his effort. After all, Venezuela had proven to be a corruption paradise during the five-year period when Espirito Santo was living off of it, and where anything was possible. On April 11th 2014, encouraged by the imminent injection of liquidity, they raised the limit of indebtedness, such as was Salgado’s wish. On April 30th, just to rise the joy a bit, Márquez, using a Hotmail account, sent them a forged certificate of an extraordinary – and also imaginary – assembly of Pdvsa in which they were awarding the fund to BES for a period of six years, in fierce competition “with other proposals presented by banking companies of the likes of UBS (Zurich), BSI (Geneva) y MITSUBISHI (UFJ) Tokio (Geneva)”. But disappointment wouldn´t take long to come to the Portuguese, not only because the money was never accredited, but also because three months later the bank was intervened.  

In return, as the prosecution’s documents show, Ricardo Salgado “having achieved his goals with the elaborate scheme (…) took the effort to pay the reward promised to José Trinidad Márquez”. He organized the transfer of 4,5 million dollars to Márquez’s accounts at the BSI bank in Switzerland and Santander in Spain, as well as to an open corporate account at the BES of Luxembourg in the name of Boddickron Overseas S.A., a company being incorporated ad hoc in Panama with Domingo Galán Macías as beneficiary.

Sources in the Portuguese Public prosecutor’s office confirm that, according to available data, Márquez is still on Spanish territory, although he is no longer in the apartment on Nuñez de Balboa 77. He’s still not listed as accused, but as arguido – formal suspect, according to the Portuguese judicial vocabulary – in the case file. He is being required for questioning. Elusive and gripped by his impulses, he must be somewhere rehearsing for his next appearance as an oil expert.

In April 2019, a month after Venezuela burned out into darkness, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez picked up the phone and contacted a group of Mexican businessmen that mastered the electricity sector. Originally, the idea was to see how they could bring power plants to Venezuela to ease the effects of the electricity crisis. However, from the first trip of the businessmen to Caracas, it was clear that their business intentions went beyond the acquisition of power generators. Several members of the Venezuelan government and operators of the Chavista leadership proposed what would become the germ of an international plot to generate an untraceable business. EL PAÍS and Armando.info have thousands of documents that, together with dozens of interviews―including some persons involved who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliations―attest to how this shady network was created and developed. A scheme that first exchanged oil for food and drinking water tankers, and then went on to collect money from oil exports through financial circuits outside the control of the United States of America. All those involved have a common link, Alex Saab, a contractor of Chavismo since 2011, who is said to be Nicolás Maduro’s front man, and is awaiting extradition in Cape Verde to be tried on money laundering in the U.S.

The origin of this network lies in the sanctions imposed on Venezuela since late 2014, mainly by Washington, under Obama’s and then Trump’s administration, to exert pressure on Maduro’s government in an attempt to stop the human rights violations, and openly forcing a political change that never came. Today, with Joe Biden recently installed in the White House, the sanctions are a bargaining chip in a potential negotiation between the opposition and the heir of Chávez to find a way out of the crisis in the country. 

These exertions did reduce the leeway of Chavismo to do business with many companies, as they fear being the target of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. And PDVSA has been the bull’s eye of all the pressure, as it is the great source of foreign currency to Venezuela, the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, sanctioned since early 2019 by the Trump administration. After the state-owned oil company reached a point where foreign currency was scarce after the government spent it in all sorts of operations, Chavismo resorted to business transactions that allow them to pay with crude oil instead of money.

Delcy Rodríguez Gómez was key to activate the Mexican link. Along with her brother Jorge―current president of the National Assembly and former minister in several occasions-, they constitute one of the pillars of Nicolás Maduro’s government and a duo whose power has allowed them to displace Diosdado Cabello, as the unofficial number two of Chavismo. The former foreign minister and current vice-president scheduled in April 2019 a series of meetings between state officials and operators who were close to the Chavista leadership and a group of Mexican businessmen, including politician José Adolfo Murat, whom she knew from international forums of leftist organizations, like the one in Biarritz. With Simón Zerpa, the then Minister of Economy ―now in decline after accusations of disloyalty-, the possibility of an exchange of crude oil for tankers of drinking water and food was verbalized. Moreover, the minister asked the Mexicans whether it was possible to have a key post in Veracruz―the main port of Mexico from where companies linked to Alex Saab dispatched millions of low-quality and overpriced foodstuffs in CLAP boxes to Venezuela from 2016 to 2018―, which would allow large-scale shipments to get in and out.

The next meeting was between the Mexicans and Ricardo Morón ―sanctioned by Washington in July 2020, a businessman close to Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of the President― and José Luis Sandoval, a PDVSA official. They raise the point of the need to exchange oil for white corn and durum wheat through Colombia ⸺the price and payment would be quoted in gold.

They also met with Omar Abou Nassif, brother of a businessman close to Delcy Rodríguez. Nassif suggested the Mexicans the possibility of moving some foodstuffs with transactions to be made through Hong Kong, assuring them that he counted on the collaboration of some suppliers in Mexico. Nassif’s statement was not trivial. He had also participated since 2016 in the CLAP scheme, precisely with companies registered in Hong Kong. Between 2016 and 2018, Alex Saab and his partner, the also Colombian Álvaro Pulido Vargas ―whose real name was Germán Rubio, but changed it after being involved in 2000 in a drug trafficking operation linked to the Bogota cartel― devised a structure of shell companies in Hong Kong, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The Mexican businessmen benefited from these companies, some of which -as it has been proved- were linked to the new network that began to be woven in April 2019. The figure of Alex Saab also appears in those meetings in Caracas, since the Mexican businessmen met with one of his operators.

That series of contacts was taking shape upon his return to Mexico. Then, according to the reconstruction made through this investigation conducted by EL PAÍS and Armando.info, Joaquín Leal appeared on the scene ―a 29-year-old businessman, who the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned since June 2020 for his business with Venezuela, and who, at that time, worked at Diversidad, the company of the above mentioned José Adolfo Murat, with whom he began to develop the business proposed to them. 

In May 2019, Murat flies to Caracas with Leal. The Mexican businessmen meet again with Simón Zerpa. The aim is to materialize the operations that have only been discussed until then. Although Zerpa proposes to the Mexicans to receive direct payments in rubles or euros, the formula adopted is the exchange of oil for food and drinking water tankers.

The formula selected that they would implement a month later without Murat, only with Leal, as counterpart, implied that the Venezuelan party would ask a third actor to pay the Mexicans a 70% advance in euros. There is no account number of the recipient of the payment in either of the two contracts of the operation amounting to 200 million euros. “To the competent bodies,” it is the peculiar formula used in both cases, which also states that this payment may be made “in installments” and there is the possibility of terminating the contract within 90 days. Under the contracts, the remaining 30% of the payment “will be processed by buyer through competent financing entities,” and nothing else is said about the person referred to.

After signing the trade agreements, Leal sought advice and was responsible for finding the trucks and coordinating the transfer of the food from Mexico. He also negotiated the price of oil with his Venezuelan contacts. In the emails he portrayed himself as the legal representative of Libre Abordo, the company with which the Venezuelan government made the deal. After closing the deal, the Venezuelan oil company sent a series of invoices to Libre Abordo “to the attention” of Olga María Zepeda Esparza, director and partner of the company - currently sanctioned by the U.S. - detailing the equivalent in barrels of oil and the millions of euros that the oil company demanded as payment to the Mexican firm, in addition to the barter for food and products in kind. For example, an invoice dated June 19, 2020 for 32.9 million euros (equal to 36.3 million dollars at that time) states that the destination of the oil was the port of Singapore.

The oil-for-food and water tanker operation was the trigger for the U.S. Department of the Treasury to sanction Libre Abordo, Joaquín Leal and Zepeda Esparza a year later, in June 2020. Then, Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), headed by Santiago Nieto, launched an investigation to follow the money trail. The results, however, are negligible. Just last May 18, the UIF filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office―to which we have had access for this report―and requested the seizure of about a hundred accounts of Libre Abordo, Leal, Zepeda Esparza and his mother, Veronica Esparza, a partner in the company.

The trip in that spring was the only one that Murat and Leal made together to Caracas. Murat, consulted for this report, assures that he left the business in Leal’s hands when he returned from Venezuela. When Leal told Murat that the Venezuelan party insisted on including an oil swap as part of the deal, Murat asked him not to go ahead. “I told him there were U.S. sanctions and we couldn’t get into that mess,” he said. According to Murat’s version, he broke off the relationship with Leal months later, in 2019, upon realizing that despite the warnings, Leal had continued with the business from Libre Abordo.

On the other hand, Leal did not want to give his version or an answer to the interview requests for this investigation.

The Venezuelan vice president was also asked to give her version, but no response was received at the time of closing this release.

The ‘humanitarian’ aspect was a mere excuse

From the operations for tank trucks and corn, Leal, together with Alex Saab, organized a secret network from Mexico at the service of Maduro’s government for the country to sell Venezuelan oil regardless of U.S. sanctions. In an attempt to hide the money trail, he created dozens of companies and weaved a network of financial partners in some thirty countries. The scheme is connected to entities worldwide, some offshore, in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Malta, Curacao, United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Greece, United States of America, Singapore, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Mexico, among other countries in Europe, Asia and America and tax havens; for example, the Isle of Man and the British Virgin Islands.

The modus operandi reconstructed in this investigation shows that the provision of humanitarian aid was just a pretext. The Mexican side shipped the products in kind and PDVSA paid them with oil and logistics to take it out of the country in ships. However, behind this operation, a more complex one was hidden, generating millions in profits for those involved through the resale of crude oil at below-market prices, with money that eventually returned to PDVSA as payment for the merchandise. The Venezuelan oil company ended up charging the invoices issued to Libre Abordo against accounts in Russian banks, such as Gazprombank and Evrofinance Mosnarbank. Thus, they were able to carry out the transactions outside the U.S. banking system, without involving U.S. citizens. The documents at hand for this investigation show that the oil deals were in place from November 2019 to May 2020. In most cases, food barter was set aside and oil was sold directly to Mexican intermediaries.

After Libre Abordo agreed upon the transport of oil from Venezuela, it used a group of intermediaries to proceed with the resale of the barrels. It usually sought buyers from the same consortium involved in the scheme or refineries abroad. For example, a shipment delivered in Malaysia to a Chinese company was resold by Orin Energy, a holding company engaged in raw materials. Leal and Libre Abordo’s network had its main clients in Asia. In the corporate presentations, it is stated that two of the main buyers of Venezuelan oil were the Chinese companies PetroChina and Sinopec. Most of its shipments were also sent to Singapore and Malaysia, two major world refining centers.

In a first stage, Libre Abordo looked for clients and ways to place the oil in the global energy market. When the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the Mexican company in June 2020, it indicated that the company used the same international routes, the same shipping processes and the same clients that two Swiss subsidiaries of the oil company Rosneft had used in the past. The Russian giant was one of PDVSA’s main partners, but left the business in February 2020 after being sanctioned by Washington for its dealings with Venezuela. Leal and his partners also consulted other participants in the scheme designed from the government of Maduro, like Alessandro Bazzoni, an Italian with a long history of business with PDVSA, and Philipp Apikian, a Swiss who has also been involved in the sale and shipment of Venezuelan oil. The White House sanctioned both in January 2021, as participants in the same scheme that has moved millions of barrels of Venezuelan crude oil under the radar of the U.S. sanctions.

La trama de petróleo por alimentos

EE UU impuso desde 2014 restricciones económicas a Venezuela para asfixiar al Gobierno de Maduro

1

Las sanciones de Estados Unidos

Gobierno

de Maduro

Petróleo

PDVSA

EE UU cierra el mercado internacional de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). El país pierde su principal fuente de divisas.

Dinero

2

El Gobierno venezolano

evade las sanciones

PDVSA

El Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro aprovecha las rutas de las petroleras rusas para seguir comerciando su crudo con otros países

Los pagos se realizan en euros o rublos para evitar a la banca estadounidense

Rusia

India

China

Irán

3

Venezuela necesita nuevos socios

PDVSA

La empresa mexicana Libre Abordo pacta un intercambio de maíz y camiones cisterna de agua potable por petróleo de PDVSA

México

4

La trama se extiende

En una fase más avanzada, empresas comercializadoras mexicanas firman contratos en los que ofrecen a sacar el petróleo de Venezuela y revenderlo

Dinero

China

Singapur

Malasia

Irán

Bangladés

Palestina

India

Fuente: elaboración propia.

N. CATALÁN / EL PAÍS

La trama de petróleo por alimentos

EE UU impuso desde 2014 restricciones económicas a Venezuela para asfixiar al Gobierno de Maduro

1

Las sanciones de Estados Unidos

Gobierno

de Maduro

Petróleo

PDVSA

EE UU cierra el mercado internacional de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). El país pierde su principal fuente de divisas.

Dinero

2

El Gobierno venezolano

evade las sanciones

PDVSA

El Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro aprovecha las rutas de las petroleras rusas para seguir comerciando su crudo con otros países

Los pagos se realizan en euros o rublos para evitar a la banca estadounidense

Rusia

India

China

Irán

3

Venezuela necesita nuevos socios

PDVSA

La empresa mexicana Libre Abordo pacta un intercambio de maíz y camiones cisterna de agua potable por petróleo de PDVSA

México

4

La trama se extiende

En una fase más avanzada, empresas comercializadoras mexicanas firman contratos en los que ofrecen a sacar el petróleo de Venezuela y revenderlo

Dinero

China

Singapur

Malasia

Irán

Bangladés

Palestina

India

Fuente: elaboración propia.

N. CATALÁN / EL PAÍS

La trama de petróleo por alimentos

EE UU impuso desde 2014 restricciones económicas a Venezuela para asfixiar al Gobierno de Maduro

1

Las sanciones de Estados Unidos

Gobierno

de Maduro

Petróleo

PDVSA

EE UU cierra el mercado internacional de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). El país pierde su principal fuente de divisas.

Dinero

2

El Gobierno venezolano evade las sanciones

PDVSA

El Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro aprovecha las rutas de las petroleras rusas para seguir comerciando su crudo con otros países

Los pagos se realizan en euros o rublos para evitar a la banca estadounidense

Rusia

India

China

Irán

3

Venezuela necesita nuevos socios

PDVSA

La empresa mexicana Libre Abordo pacta un intercambio de maíz y camiones cisterna de agua potable por petróleo de PDVSA

México

4

La trama se extiende

En una fase más avanzada, empresas comercializadoras mexicanas firman contratos en los que ofrecen a sacar el petróleo de Venezuela y revenderlo

Dinero

China

Singapur

Malasia

India

Irán

Bangladés

Palestina

Fuente: elaboración propia.

N. CATALÁN / EL PAÍS

La trama de petróleo por alimentos

EE UU impuso desde 2014 restricciones económicas a Venezuela para asfixiar al Gobierno de Maduro

Venezuela necesita

nuevos socios

La trama

se extiende

Las sanciones de

Estados Unidos

El Gobierno venezolano

evade las sanciones

1

2

3

4

Gobierno

de Maduro

PDVSA

PDVSA

China

India

Los pagos se realizan en euros o rublos para evitar a la banca estadounidense

Singapur

Petróleo

Malasia

PDVSA

México

Irán

Bangladés

Palestina

Dinero

Dinero

Rusia

India

China

Irán

En una fase más avanzada, comercializadoras mexicanas firman contratos en los que ofrecen a sacar el petróleo de Venezuela y revenderlo

EE UU cierra el mercado internacional de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). El país pierde su principal fuente de divisas.

El Gobierno de Maduro aprovecha las rutas de las petroleras rusas para seguir comerciando su crudo con otros países

La empresa mexicana Libre Abordo pacta un intercambio de maíz y camiones cisterna de agua potable por petróleo de PDVSA

Fuente: elaboración propia.

N. CATALÁN / EL PAÍS

Las diversas redes operaban en 30 países a través de más de 50 empresas

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

Las diversas redes operaban en 30 países a través de más de 50 empresas

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

Las diversas redes operaban en 30 países a través de más de 50 empresas

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

Protagonistas de la trama

Gobierno venezolano

Delcy

Rodríguez

Vicepresidenta

Nicolás

Maduro

Presidente

Tareck

El Aissami

Ministro del Petróleo

PDVSA

CORPOVEX

Corporación Venezolana

de Comercio Exterior

Conseguidor

Álex Saab

Supuesto testaferro.

Negocio de los CLAP*

Empresarios

J. L. Sandoval

Ricardo Morón

Omar Nassif

Negocio de

los CLAP*

Programa

Petróleo por

alimentos

Empresarios

Empresarios

mexicanos

Alessandro Bazzoni

Joaquín Leal

Philipp Apikian

Verónica Esparza

(madre)

Francisco D’Agostino

Olga Mª Zepeda Esparza

(hija)

ELEMENTO

SWISSOIL TRADING

LIBRE ABORDO

SCHLAGER BUSINESS

WASHINGTON TRADING

ALEL TECHNOLOGIES

Intermediarios

navieros

y financieros

LUZY TECHNOLOGIES

COSMO RESOURCES

MÁS DE 50 EMPRESAS

EN 30 PAÍSES

Clientes finales

PetroChina

Sinopec

Refinerías en Asia

* Cajas de comida subsidiadas y distribuidas por los CLAP

(Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción)

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

Protagonistas de la trama

Gobierno venezolano

Delcy

Rodríguez

Vicepresidenta

Nicolás

Maduro

Presidente

Tareck

El Aissami

Ministro del Petróleo

PDVSA

CORPOVEX

Corporación Venezolana

de Comercio Exterior

Conseguidor

Álex Saab

Supuesto testaferro.

Negocio de los CLAP*

Empresarios

J. L. Sandoval

Ricardo Morón

Omar Nassif

Negocio de

los CLAP*

Programa

Petróleo por

alimentos

Empresarios

Empresarios

mexicanos

Alessandro Bazzoni

Joaquín Leal

Philipp Apikian

Verónica Esparza

(madre)

Francisco D’Agostino

Olga Mª Zepeda Esparza

(hija)

ELEMENTO

SWISSOIL TRADING

LIBRE ABORDO

SCHLAGER BUSINESS

WASHINGTON TRADING

ALEL TECHNOLOGIES

Intermediarios

navieros

y financieros

LUZY TECHNOLOGIES

COSMO RESOURCES

MÁS DE 50 EMPRESAS

EN 30 PAÍSES

Clientes finales

PetroChina

Sinopec

Refinerías en Asia

* Cajas de comida subsidiadas y distribuidas por los CLAP

(Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción)

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

Protagonistas de la trama

Gobierno venezolano

Delcy

Rodríguez

Vicepresidenta

Nicolás

Maduro

Presidente

Tareck

El Aissami

Ministro del Petróleo

PDVSA

CORPOVEX

Corporación Venezolana

de Comercio Exterior

Conseguidor

Álex Saab

Supuesto testaferro.

Negocio de los CLAP*

Empresarios

J. L. Sandoval

Ricardo Morón

Omar Nassif

Programa

Petróleo por

alimentos

Negocio de los CLAP*

Empresarios

Empresarios

mexicanos

Alessandro Bazzoni

Joaquín Leal

Philipp Apikian

Verónica Esparza

(madre)

Francisco D’Agostino

Olga Mª Zepeda Esparza

(hija)

ELEMENTO

SWISSOIL TRADING

LIBRE ABORDO

SCHLAGER BUSINESS

WASHINGTON TRADING

ALEL TECHNOLOGIES

Intermediarios navieros y financieros

LUZY TECHNOLOGIES

COSMO RESOURCES

MÁS DE 50 EMPRESAS EN 30 PAÍSES

Clientes finales

PetroChina

Sinopec

Refinerías en Asia

* Cajas de comida subsidiadas y distribuidas por los CLAP

(Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción)

Fuente: elaboración propia.

EL PAÍS

An old acquaintance of PDVSA

One of the central intermediaries that Leal used to resell the crude oil was Elemento, a company incorporated by Bazzoni in Malta, in March 2015, with subsidiaries in the Caribbean island of Curacao and the United Kingdom, and which had previously traded Venezuelan oil in association with an American company. Elemento moved at least thirteen PDVSA cargoes between February and December 2019. Following the dealings with Leal, Bazzoni’s company took over one of the first two cargoes that Libre Abordo took out of Venezuela. The merchandise resold by Elemento was delivered in Singapore to a Macao company ―a former Portuguese enclave in China, with a sovereignty status similar to Hong Kong until 2049 ― in April 2020, almost a year after it sailed from the Caribbean country.

It was not the first time that Elemento helped the Maduro government to take hundreds of millions of barrels of oil off the coast of the South American country, according to the thousands of documents in the hands of the two media that are part of this investigation. To resell the shipments, Elemento used Swissoil Trading S.A., an energy company founded in Switzerland in 1998, which has acted as a reseller of raw materials in the Middle East and Asia, with Apikian as the sole administrator. With the intention of replicating this scheme devised by Elemento and reducing the losses and legal issues of resorting to other intermediaries to resell crude, on February 11, 2020, Leal founded Cosmo Resources in Singapore. The aim, according to an organizational chart designed by Leal himself, was to share the company’s board of directors with his partner Bazzoni to continue marketing oil in Asia and other parts of the world.

Through company Cosmo, the Mexican businessman explored the idea of absorbing Libre Abordo and its subsidiary Schlager Business Group, in charge of giving administrative support to the operations of its parent company. On February 16, 2020, Leal sent an email indicating that he was considering the possibility of Cosmo buying Libre Abordo. A day later, Hugo Villaseñor, Cosmo’s CFO and a close friend of Leal, coordinated the opening of a bank account for the company. In an email sent to an executive of Alpha FX, a London-based bank specializing in foreign exchange and offering its services internationally for “companies and institutions affected by currency liability,” Villaseñor requested the opening of the account, estimating a monthly flow of money ranging from 15 to 50 million euros. The account was opened on the recommendation of Richard Rothenberg, CFO of Elemento.

Cosmo’s role is crucial to understanding how the oil trades were capitalized under the guise of humanitarian aid. In the application to open the account, the company explained that its main source of income came from payments made by PetroChina and Sinopec refineries for oil shipments from Venezuela. Other income came from payments made by other commodities intermediaries, such as Beaconsfield Commodities Trading, a Bazzoni consortium incorporated in Switzerland, with subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, South Africa, Switzerland and Sweden., On the other hand, the main cash outflows of Cosmo were payments made to Elemento and Libre Abordo, which were in charge of taking the oil out of Venezuela. One of the plans of the young Mexican businessman was to do the same business he had done with PDVSA and other Latin American oil companies, like Pemex, Colombia’s Ecopetrol, and Petroecuador.

Mexicans instead of Russians

Rosneft’s exit from Venezuela propelled the business of Leal and his partners. With the departure of the Russian giant, one of PDVSA’s main partners, the quantities of crude oil to which the Mexican network had access skyrocketed. According to the Department of the Treasury, by April 2020, Mexican businessmen received around 40% of the Venezuelan oil company’s exports. But it is true that the more their businesses boomed, the more Leal became concerned about the legal status of the deals of his companies with Venezuela. In December 2019, he sought advice at the U.S. law firm, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. In March 2020, when Leal was already under the scrutiny of the United States of America, a Mexican law firm also issued its legal opinion on the sanctions that Leal and Libre Abordo were likely to face.

From Mexico, Leal designed different schemes to do business with Venezuela, and used financial engineering to manage his assets in an attempt to erase the money trail. The documentation in the hands of EL PAÍS and Armando.info contains thousands of emails exchanged between the members of Leal’s plot: Spreadsheets with the value of crude oil and the monthly flows from marketing the shipments, as well as export contracts, invoices of purchase and sale operations and financial advisory services. There are also bank references, business plans considering the possibility of entering the copper and aluminum market, and a list of payments for general and administrative costs of the different companies in the network, i.e. rent, utilities and international travel expenses.

A document with the income of Leal’s companies recorded in 2019 shows the huge rise of this group of businessmen, virtually unknown until then. That year alone, five companies linked to the young businessman collected over $107 million, even though they had not yet reached the peak of the business with Venezuelan oil. The highest payroll payments in these companies were the salaries of Leal, 750,000 Mexican pesos a month (just over 37,000 dollars), and his mother and sister who were paid half a million pesos (25,000 dollars). The file with the 2019 accounting, also includes the salary of the grandmother, who that year earned 30,000 Mexican pesos a month (1,500 dollars).

EL PAÍS and Armando.info have been able to verify that Leal and his entourage used at least 50 companies to hide the money trail. Behind each business plan, there was a company to carry out his projects. In most cases, Leal did not appear as a partner, but as a legal representative. Veronica Esparza and her daughter Olga Maria Zepeda Esparza, or other family members, were usually behind the companies. In his broad portfolio, he also created structures in tax havens, where the identity of the partners does not openly appear in the records and where it is easy to hide high flows of money, thus evading tax payments. One of the companies is JLJ Technologies LLC, incorporated in Wyoming, ―a state of the Union that in practice serves as a tax haven―on March 20, 2019, where Leal was registered as the sole administrator. This company had no real business operation, but allowed Leal to hide the trail of the partners behind his companies.

He also created Mystic Universe, a company in the British Virgin Islands, ―the largest tax haven on the planet in terms of turnover and number of incorporated companies― which had a mirror company in Ontario, Canada. Both companies were incorporated by Leal in May 2019, in the course of his first trips to Caracas. According to the articles of incorporation reviewed, Leal owned 90% of the shares, while his mother, María Teresa Alfaro, and his sister, Carlota Jiménez, owned 5% each. On August 5, 2019, Mystic began operations as a holding-operating company that absorbed control of other companies linked to Leal.

One of the presentations prepared by Leal’s team assures that Mystic invested in companies engaged in technology, energy and commodities in America and other countries outside the continent. “Mystic Universe’s goal is to change the world; hence, we focus on core industries ⸺energy, technology, commodities, finance and healthcare,” is a statement that stands out in the document. On its former website, Mystic claimed to have invested more than $300 million. But all the beneficiaries of Mystic’s investments were other companies of Leal.

Mystic was presented in the Mexican media as a Canadian investment fund focused on social impact projects. In media pieces published between August and September 2019, it was announced that the company would invest in Hábitos Luzy, the Mexican subsidiary of Luzy Technologies, a company that has been blacklisted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury since June 2020. On paper, the company specializes in providing health and food advice through a mobile app, managing industrial canteens and reselling sanitary products.

Leal, who constantly devised how to reorganize his vast portfolio of companies through trusts, front companies and front men, approached Morgan Stanley investment banking on April 16, 2020, to assess the option of Mystic Universe being listed. Mystic’s CFO was José Luis Chávez Calva, who was a general coordinator at the state-owned Energy Regulatory Commission (September 2016 to June 2017). He was one of the two persons considered to lead the Federal Electricity Commission, the main government company in the sector. The politician, Manuel Bartlett, was finally appointed the position.

Alex Saab left the Maiquetia International Airport on Friday, at the stroke of noon, on private plane T7-JIS. The aircraft landed in Cape Verde at night, just minutes past 5 p.m. in Caracas. U.S. authorities ?actively following Alex Saab’s trail after including him on the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions list and accusing him of money laundering in mid-2019? issued a red alert and Interpol officials captured him.

It might be the penultimate trip of the Barranquilla-born man, who, within a few years, was the recipient ?along with his partner, Alvaro Pulido Vargas, also Colombian, whose name was German Rubio, until 2001? of millionaire contracts and businesses of different kinds, while the country was sinking into an endless collapse. Following the trail of the plane that took him to Cape Verde, for example, or other aircraft used in recent years by the Colombian duo, also entails the reconstruction of their business trail.

Bombardier Global 5000 T7-JIS ?a Canadian-made twin-engine plane, designed to serve the executive market, with a capacity of up to 16 passengers, depending on its arrangement? arrived on March 8 in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and two days later, it was back in Caracas, according to Armando.info with the help of Bellingcat, an electronic media company specializing in open source investigations and forensic journalism. Indeed, the air bridge between Venezuela and Iran speeded up in the last few weeks, while Maduro closed the purchase of Iranian fuel in exchange for Venezuelan gold, according to Bloomberg agency.

Moreover, sources familiar with the operation also confirmed the presence of Alex Saab in Iran shortly before the agreement was made.

Before that trip, Bombardier T7-JIS was on Colombian territory, certainly without Saab as a passenger, as the authorities have been looking for him there since late 2018. This week, which just ended, they froze assets valued at around ten million dollars, including an eight million dollar mansion in Barranquilla, his hometown.

Last February, the same plane, the T7-JIS, crossed from Maiquetia to Moscow, where Chavismo has found another financial point to evade U.S. sanctions. At that time, at least on the return trip from the Russian capital, there was also a stop in Cape Verde, where Alex Saab is now under arrest.

This is not the only aircraft that Alex Saab or his partner Alvaro Pulido Vargas used while hatching their business with Chavismo. If there is one thing they have done in recent years, it is to travel to where they created companies and made financial movements ?Antigua and Barbuda, Russia, Turkey and, more recently, African countries, such as Cape Verde itself.

Claps’ Flight Plan

Between 2017 and 2018, Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido travelled in at least two other planes, N259FG and N456JA. Both aircraft landed at Mexican airports before the Attorney General’s Office of that country announced, in October 2018, an investigation against Group Grand Limited, the Hong Kong registered company whereby the Colombian tandem won at least two food supply contracts for about $800 million.

On May 11, 2017, for example, the aircraft with registration No. N456JA arrived at the Toluca International Airport in the state of Mexico. Alex Saab was on board together with Shadi Nain Saab Certain, one of the sons of the businessman who appeared in the registration papers of Group Grand Limited in Hong Kong, the company whereby they began supplying food for the Claps. Alvaro Pulido Vargas’ flights to that terminal and others in Mexico were frequent in 2017.

A year later, in 2018, aircraft N259FG flew several times to Turkey. That year, the Colombian businessmen began to use this country with companies registered there, like Mullberry Proje Yatirim, a as a supplier for the Claps’ food, while Nicolas Maduro was strengthening his political and commercial relationship with Turkish warlord Recep Tayip Erdogan. At this time, they also started to use companies registered in the United Arab Emirates, such as Asasi Food FZE, which also won contracts worth millions for the supply of Clap boxes or medicines.

The documents obtained by Armando.info confirm that between Group Grand Limited and Asasi Food FZE alone, the contracts awarded by the state-owned Corpovex from 2016 to 2018 amounted to $1.5 billion.

The N259FG aircraft was apparently used for entertainment as well. Based on the flight history compiled by this website, the aircraft, for example, was in Saint Petersburg and Moscow on July 10 and 11, 2018, respectively, coinciding with the dates of the World Cup semi-finals in Russia. The plane left the Russian capital to Madrid on July 16, the day after the final, and two days later, continued its flight to the joyful island of Mykonos in the Aegean Sea of Greece. 

Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic or Paris in France were other destinations where the N259FG also made frequent stops in 2018. Even though Alex Saab’s close bond with Nicolas Maduro was already sounding strongly, the Department of the Treasury had not imposed sanctions. After that measure from Washington, the Colombian businessman was also the subject of other legal proceedings in Europe, such as the one announced by the Italian Guardia di Finanza in late 2019, which involved the freezing of assets valued at several million euros.

Maduro’s Agent

The arrest of Alex Saab raised such a dust that the Chavista regime, which avoided for years mentioning the Colombian man, issued on Saturday a statement in his defense, which is also revealing. In the text, released by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza less than 24 hours after Saab’s apprehension, he is described as a “Venezuelan citizen,” elevated to the status of “agent of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela.”

Armando.Info could confirm that Alex Saab is the bearer of Venezuelan identity card No. 21.495.350, and also has a Tax Information Registry (RIF) in the Venezuelan tax agency. For years, Saab also had a sort of a diplomatic passport from Antigua and Barbuda, facilitated by the Prime Minister of that country, Gaston Browne - an ally of the Bolivarian revolution - as soon as he took office in 2014.

Antigua and Barbuda is indeed one of the jurisdictions that Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido Vargas used to move funds from their businesses with Chavismo. A small bank on that island, managed by Venezuelans, received money from one of the Claps contracts, but they also moved millions of dollars from previous businesses to that tax haven, such as the construction of “vertical gyms” in 2014, awarded by the Propatria 2000 Foundation, when Walter Jacob Gavidia Flores and Carlos Malpica Flores, son and nephew of first lady Cilia Flores, respectively, were in charge of it. 

This relationship with Flores’ sons - Walter, Yosser and Yoswal Gavidia Flores – in addition to Carlos Malpica Flores, was detailed in the press release issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in July 2019, as part of the arguments to justify the inclusion of Alex Saab on the OFAC list. 

This condition as “government agent” may explain why Nicolas Maduro also pushed the state-owned PDVSA to sign a million-dollar contract in 2015 with Trenaco, Saab’s and Pulido’s shell company; why he handed over the former state-owned supply network “Abastos Bicentenario” for these Colombians to rename it Clap Stores; why he appointed Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata, a former employee of Alex Saab and Alvaro Pulido Vargas, as president of the state-owned Minerven in 2018, let him put his hands, also in 2018, on the state-owned Carbones del Zulia; or why in January 2019, Saab was about to take control of Monomeros, a Pequiven subsidiary in his native Barranquilla, with the appointment by Maduro of Ronald Alexander Ramirez Mendoza, then cancelled by Colombian authorities.

This revealed “government agent” status may also justify that Alex Saab and his business had been the excuse to end up co-opting the then opposition deputies Luis Parra, Jose Brito, Adolfo Superlano or Conrado Perez, not only to try to launder Saab’s businesses in Europe in 2019, but to lead the January 5 assault on the National Assembly against Juan Guaido.

His arrest and the fear that he would be deported or extradited to the United States was what broke the silence held sway for years around the figure of Alex Saab. “Venezuela calls on the Cape Verdean State to release Alex Saab, facilitating his return and protecting his fundamental rights,” Arreaza required in a statement.

In the next few hours, it may be confirmed what Alex Saab’s destination will be and whether Cape Verde is the penultimate trip before he ends up in front of a judge in the United States. Thus, that would be the last trip of a journey that began in 2011, when he signed in the Miraflores palace, in front of Hugo Chavez, his first big deal with the Bolivarian revolution.