It is one of the so-called "rare earth elements" and a strategic material for high-tech industry. It abounds in the south of Venezuela, next to the border with Colombia. And although the Venezuelan government announced in 2009 measures for the military control of the deposits, since then, international smuggling routes have flourished, in which drug trafficking and informal traders participate. In a climate of mystery, now the Venezuelan coltan also threatens to become a source of geopolitical conflicts.
Nearly 70 million of the state oil company insurance was in a limbo, which could well explain why the authorities did not collect any compensation for the explosion of the Amuay refinery.
Scions of different lineages of tycoons in Venezuela, Francisco D’Agostino and Eduardo Cisneros are non-blood relatives. They were also partners for a short time in Elemento Oil & Gas Ltd, a Malta-based company, over which the young Cisneros eventually took full ownership. Elemento was a protagonist in the secret network of Venezuelan crude oil marketing that Joaquín Leal activated from Mexico. However, when it came to imposing sanctions, Washington penalized D’Agostino only… Why?
When Vice President Delcy Rodríguez turned to a group of Mexican friends and partners to lessen the new electricity emergency in Venezuela, she laid the foundation stone of a shortcut through which Chavismo and its commercial allies have dodged the sanctions imposed by Washington on PDVSA’s exports of crude oil. Since then, with Alex Saab, Joaquín Leal and Alessandro Bazzoni as key figures, the circuit has spread to some thirty countries to trade other Venezuelan commodities. This is part of the revelations of this joint investigative series between the newspaper El País and Armando.info, developed from a leak of thousands of documents.
Nicolas Maduro’s main contractor was arrested last Friday, right after landing at the international airport of Cape Verde, an archipelago in the Atlantic, on the gates of Africa. It may be his penultimate trip, if he is finally deported or extradited to the United States, as U.S. authorities expect. It would be the worst of all endings after many years travelling and earning miles but, above all, millions of dollars thanks to opaque corporate structures, whereby he managed preferential currencies, public works, food supplies for the CLAPs, contracts with PDVSA, and even the trade of Venezuelan gold and coal since 2013.
Multiple indications suggest that Colombian entrepreneur Alex Saab, one of the largest suppliers of the food programs of the Government of Nicolás Maduro and target of the police investigations of several countries, participates in the opaque exchange of precious metals for consumer goods established between Venezuela and Turkey. The new president of the state company Minerven being a former employee of his, is just one of the clues.
An unknown company called Salva Foods 2015 —created months before Nicolás Maduro put out his idea of establishing a network of stores for the state program of the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP)—is the current beneficiary of that business. They are called CLAP Stores and are mistaken for a state-owned company, with food outlets where there were once the premises of Abastos Bicentenarios (state-owned supermarkets). Behind that operation, the shadow of Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Nain Saab Morán and Álvaro Pulido Vargas reappears, both linked since early 2017 to the CLAPs due to a dummy company registered in Hong Kong.
The paradisiacal tourist island of the Venezuelan Caribbean became, shortly after the death of President Hugo Chávez, in the place of a plot linked to tax havens. A leader of the far-left coalition Syriza and today powerful minister of the Greek Government, together with a Cypriot lawyer specializing in offshore business, who appeared in the Panama Papers traveled to the island. Nobody known with whom did they meet, but it is known that they completed their mysterious odyssey aboard a private jet of Majed Khalil, an entrepreneur linked to the Caracas regime.
The chemical analysis of eight Mexican brands that the Venezuelan government supplies to the low-income population through the Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP), gives scientific determination to what appeared to be an urban legend: it may be powdered, but it is not milk. The fraud affects both the coffers and the public health, by offering as food a mixture poor in calcium and proteins, yet full of carbohydrates and sodium.
This is the chronicle of a trip to nowhere. An effort of over a year to find the birth certificate of Nicolas Maduro—the key piece to solve the controversy over the nationality of the Venezuelan leader—led the team of Armando.info to the only document that the civil registry of La Candelaria Parish in Caracas could show, a few scanned pages. There is an unknown land where the original document is, if any. According to different versions, it is in a safe under the ongoing argument of "State security reasons," under a 24-hour personalized custody of at least four gatekeepers committed to deny access to the folios inside.
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.
Ángel Vivas Perdomo lived besieged in his house just over three years. He gained enormous fame because he resisted armed an arrest warrant issued by President Nicolás Maduro in February 2014. Over the months, his case was buried by the avalanche of news generated in Venezuela. Hurt, he wrote a diatribe against everyone before being captured by the state security forces on April 7. This is the story of a man who feels misunderstood.
Pequiven, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, sought shelter in tax havens to legalize its association with Iranian company National Petrochemical Company, from which Veniran emerged. Although the Panamanian law firm was suspicious of the alliance between the then presidents Hugo Chávez and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, it finally solved the inconvenience to please both clients.
Leonardo González Dellán headed Banco Industrial de Venezuela (BIV) from 2002 to 2004. The papers of Mossack Fonseca reveal that, in this period, which also coincided with the establishment of the exchange control and the birth of the extinct Cadivi, he was related to overseas companies.
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.
The family of Lebanese origin and creator of Tiuna military vehicles is the one who really controls the assembly operation of the Chinese make cars. It is formally a "mixed company" that the Government qualifies as a "highly successful experience", used by the group to secure a majority share of access to the foreign currency of the business to import parts and assembly material through an offshore corporate structure.
Far from Cuba, the Venezuelan identity documents were actually designed in Germany. Havana’s intermediation has only left a trail of transfers and commissions that transited at least four countries. For years, there was a surreptitious key character in this operation. But his secret was not kept under lock and key, and is about to be revealed in this report.
Until 2010, he was the auditor general of PDVSA. A year before retirement, he wanted to have a power of attorney to manage a company registered in Panama, through an operation that involved Switzerland and Luxembourg, all under a scheme designed by Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm specialized in creating international structures to cover the wealth of those who can pay for their services.
In 2007, Retired General Víctor Cruz Weffer, head of Plan Bolívar 2000 and Fondur, opened a company in Seychelles after he was charged for illicit enrichment and data concealment. He could never justify the Bs. 1,071 million increase of his equity, equal to 86% of the funds he managed from 2000 to 2003.
As part of a global project, Venezuelan journalists participated in the review of millions of files leaked from a Panamanian law firm specialized in registering companies in tax havens. The documents, obtained by the German newspaper 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' and processed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), show patterns for government officials and business groups to hide their identities or money.
Carlos Erik Malpica Flores is one of the most powerful civilians in Venezuela because of his resources and positions held. He is the current treasurer of the Republic and administrator of PDVSA finances. He has had an astronomical career as a public official since he joined the government with the help of his aunt Cilia Flores and uncle Nicolás Maduro. For 10 years, he has managed to stay in the dark and carefully watch over the details of his management. His name began to resonate recently, after two young relatives of the First Lady were arrested for alleged drug trafficking in New York. Today, his identity is exposed, as well as a series of businesses in Panama associated with his relatives.
