![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/PP-25.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\nBased \r\non immigration records, Pardo Mesones arrived in the Venezuelan capital on July \r\n26, 2006, at 2:49 PM, on flight 223 of Copa Airlines and flight back a couple of \r\ndays later after a negotiation in which, according to the database of the \r\nAdministrative Service of Identification, Migration, and Immigration (Saime), he \r\ncoincided in Venezuela with the German Joerg Baumgartl, who was the head of \r\ncompany Bundesdrukerei.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
The \r\nrest of the business was coordinated between Lima and Panama City, in the \r\noffices of Mossack Fonseca, the staff of which designed a \u201cfinancial bicycle\u201d \r\nthat enabled the triangulation. Just two weeks before the visit to Caracas, \r\nPardo Mesones had chosen the name of the company from a list of three turn-key \r\nlaw firms recently registered in Panama and ready to be used. \"The client wants \r\nto acquire company Billingsley Global Corp,\" the representative of the law firm \r\nin Lima, M\u00f3nica Ycaza, wrote on July 11, 2006 to her co-workers at the \r\nheadquarters.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
In \r\nPanama, they concluded the coordination of the process and even opened the bank \r\naccounts where the first deposits from Havana arrived. Pardo Mesones had \r\nprovided one of the best business cards for that purpose, a reference \r\nletter<\/A> signed \r\nby Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki, the then second leader in the government of Alejandro \r\nToledo and current candidate with options to win the Presidency of Peru in the \r\nsecond round.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n \"I \r\nam pleased to introduce Mr. Francisco Pardo Mesones, who is an old acquaintance \r\nof mine, an honorable and well-known man in Peru,\" Kuczysnki wrote in the \r\nletter, stamped in June 2006, with a letterhead of the Peruvian Council of \r\nMinisters. Now in campaign, he warns that the letter was a plain formalism. \r\nPardo and Kuczysnki were peers in the classrooms of Markham College in Lima. But \r\nthere are no close ties, says the presidential candidate. \"Now I see him \r\nsporadically,\" he says. \"I have signed many such letters. In many cases, I was \r\nasked to write letters of introduction for Peruvian professionals, and I did it \r\nwith pleasure.\"<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n With \r\nthese references, in any case, and the contracts signed with Cuba and Venezuela, \r\nthe newly created company Billingsley Gobal Corp secured at least 64 million \r\neuros for itself: 40 million had to reach Germany and the other 24 would stay \r\nwith Pardo in Panama, as Owens warned in another email to Sascha Haust from the \r\nGerman bank Dresdner Bank AG. But, even so, it was not easy to find \r\ninternational banks that accepted the letters of credit from Banco Financiero \r\nInternacional of Cuba as collaterals, as it is affected by the still effective \r\neconomic blockade imposed by the US government on the entire Cuban \r\neconomy.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n In \r\nPanama, Credicorp and Multibank opened the first accounts for Billingsley. The \r\nmost difficult thing was to find other key players acting as extras in Europe to \r\nfinish triangulating the journey of some transfers from Venezuela to \r\nGermany.<\/p>\n\n\n Owens \r\nand the rest of Mossack Fonseca's team knocked on the doors of BBVA, Berenberg \r\nBank and Dresdner Bank AG. They even appealed to the Republic Bank Limited of \r\nTrinidad and Tobago, which \u2013 in his own words - has been able to take advantage \r\nof the embargo against Cuba to pay its cash bills in exchange for unprecedented \r\ncommissions ranging between 10% and 20%. \"Basically, the government of Cuba is a \r\nclient of this bank.\" He says in a string of emails that they were looking where \r\nto keep the money. \"Anyway, this is a bank that deals with Cuba, and may have \r\nideas and solutions for our friend Pardo Mesones \r\n:).\"<\/p>\n\n\n Venezuelan \r\npassports have been issued in this way in the shadow of absolute secrecy. The \r\nnegotiation - until now kept secret - establishes express confidentiality \r\nclauses, and not in one or two, but in all contracts. Even in the following \r\nphases, as it can be read in \u201cContract \r\nI10-084-000\/2010<\/A> for \r\nthe expansion of the passport and electronic identity card personalization \r\nsystem for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela\".<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Cuba \r\nalso reserved access to the software through Albet Ingenier\u00eda y Sistemas, the \r\nsubsidiary that the Castro regime designed exclusively for this task. \"Albet \r\nwill acquire a perpetual, non-exclusive and non-transferable right of use \r\nthrough the software provided together with the system,\" the document \r\nstates.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Computer \r\nengineer Anthony Daquin had already warned that - after reporting the case - he \r\nwent from being an advisor to the Ministry of Interior and Justice to an asylee \r\nin the United States of America. \"The Cubans manage the software and set the \r\nsecurity guidelines,\" said journalist Adriana Rivera in the July 20, 2011 issue \r\nof the newspaper El Nacional, in a report<\/A> that \r\ngave for the first time news about the hand of Cuba in the Venezuelan \r\nidentification system.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n \"The \r\noriginals of the source codes (those describing the operation of the software \r\nand allowing changes to be made) of the developed computer applications will be \r\nkept by the Cuban side while the technical support period remains in effect,\" he \r\nsaid at the time. Today he says from the USA that nothing has changed. \"These \r\npeople have the capacity to issue a Venezuelan passport in Cuba and set up the \r\ndata in the system at the same time.\"<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n To \r\nDaquin, it is no accident that Caracas became one of the most dangerous cities \r\nin the world just when the Venezuelan Government interconnected the civil \r\nregistry with tax and commercial information. \"The organized crime is using the \r\nsystem to kidnap!\" He exclaims on the other side of the phone. But even if that \r\nwere not the case, there is no doubt that the burgundy passports were so \r\nexpensive that they made it possible for a series of transfers and commissions \r\nfrom Havana to the anything but socialist law firm Mossack \r\nFonseca.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\r\n\n It \r\nwas precisely in the offices of Mossack Fonseca where they always took care to \r\nkeep under lock and key the intricacies of this operation. Even Pardo Mesones\u2019 \r\nr\u00e9sum\u00e9 remained there, where it is evident that already in the 70s he was no \r\nalien to Venezuela, where he started a career in the insurance market leading \r\nthe Association of Insurers of Venezuela, La Uni\u00f3n Compa\u00f1\u00eda de Seguros \r\n(insurance company) and the local office of American International \r\nUnderwriters.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n The \r\nPanamanian law firm also kept a copy of his passport. Despite all these \r\nevidences, Pardo Mesones categorically denied his participation in this story. \r\n\"I do not know what you are talking about,\" he answered this week by phone in \r\nLima. \"I cannot meet with you because I do not know what you are talking about. \r\nI am a 78-year-old man, I am retired and I do not want to know anything about \r\nthe Prosecutor's Office or strange things.\"<\/p>\n\n\n Moderate \r\nand cautious, Pardo Mesones had left no traces since 2006. When he opened the \r\ncompany, he asked for the documents not to be sent to Lima and, in just in case, \r\nhe requested through his agents for the registration to be with \"bearer shares,\" \r\na legal concept that in Panama allows anonymity to be kept under a title that \r\nguarantees ownership to anyone who has it in their hands. Something like a \r\ntraveler's check.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Billingsley \r\nwas a kind of ghost, which could only sense some lights when someone had to sign \r\non its behalf. In 2008, it registered special powers of attorney for Pardo \r\nMesones and his partners in the Bundesdruckerei, the Germans Joachim Gerhard \r\nKammerer and Joerg Baumgatl, the same who, under affidavit of April 3, 2014, \r\ndenied having had personal links with Billingsley Global \r\nCorp.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Two \r\nyears later, Mossack Fonseca put an additional reserve lock when placing lawyer \r\nRicardo Icaza Huertas at the head of the company, whose name stands out in the \r\nPublic Registry of Panama in charge of over 230 companies. At the same time, the \r\nfictitious owner guaranteed the shares to the real owner through a trust of the \r\nshares.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n But \r\nCaesar's wife must be above suspicion. Jealous that its own seemed like another \r\nbriefcase company, the law firm implemented in Billingsley a telephone service \r\nnumber +511 965-2631, as part of another of its products, the \"virtual office\" \r\nservice, with a rate established at $ 45 for each email or phone calls \r\nattended.<\/B><\/p>\n\n\r\n\n \"Good \r\nmorning, Billingsley Global Corporation, what can I do for you?\" the recording \r\nsaid. Then, it was the turn of a bilingual operator to whom the name of \r\nFrancisco Pardo Mesones was written under an item dedicated to specify the \r\n\"Details of the effective owner (true owner).\" Billingsley also promoted itself \r\non the Web, through the Google Ads advertisement service. The invoice \r\nof the transaction<\/A> was \r\nregistered with code GG11\/PA\/00867988\/00002157 in the name of Francis P\u00e9rez, \r\nanother Mossack Fonseca employee, who, even before this case, had already been \r\nmentioned in other countries for being on the board of directors of companies \r\nsuch as Helvetic Services Group and Cifart, investigated for corruption scandals \r\nin Argentina and Paraguay, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n Most \r\nof the money finally arrived in Europe, but in parts. While there are \r\npowers \r\nof attorney<\/A> \r\nand invoices<\/A> \r\nthat involve Bundesdrukerei in this scheme, its director, Joerg Baumgartl, \r\nalways took care not to appear in public. But he forgot to take into account \r\nthat his father-in-law, Peruvian Miguel Arbul\u00fa Alva, not only represented the \r\nGerman company in Peru, but as stated in his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, he held key positions in \r\nthe business consulting firm Exxed, founded by nothing less than Pardo \r\nMesones.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Baumgartl \r\nalso forgot that even though he was hidden in the Caribbean, his name was \r\nregistered along with Pardo Mesones, not in Billingsley Global Corp of Panama \r\nbut in Billingsley \r\nGlobal Investments Corp<\/A> of \r\nthe British Virgin Islands, better known as a tax haven than for its \r\nbeaches.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n The \r\nsame Peruvian and the same German who met in Caracas in July 2006, were united a \r\nyear later -on June 13, 2007- in a society in which both of them gave the \r\naddress of La Molina de Lima, Calle La Vuelto 145, Rinconada Alta, where Pardo \r\nMesones lives, as their domicile.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n As \r\nif it were about Russian dolls, the weekly news magazine Der \r\nSpiegel<\/A><\/I>, \r\npublished in Hamburg warned in its February 20, 2014 issue, that the same \r\nBundesdrukerei that manufactures the German passports and a most of the euro \r\nzone banknotes was part of a web of companies within companies, also of Latin \r\nAmerican bribes and commissions. That day, they published the name of \r\nBillingsley. Now the company did not only appear in Google Adds, but in \"a money \r\nlaundering play.\"<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Based \r\non the testimony of a former Bundesdruckerei broker in Venezuela to Der \r\nSpiegel<\/I>, there were two other offshore Panamanian companies, Selbor and \r\nSotelco, created at the request of Baumgartl, which corresponds to the new data \r\nobtained. In Mossack Fonseca's communications there is an invoice from Sotelco \r\nof more than half a million euros, for \"data capturing\" services provided to \r\nBillingsley Global Corp.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Baumgartl \r\nsued Der Spiegel<\/I> before the Court of Cologne specializing in press \r\nmatters, the same that gave the green light to the weekly news magazine to \r\ncontinue writing about the subject.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Although \r\nthe name of Pardo Mesones did not appear in that first issue of Der \r\nSpiegel<\/I>, the alarms in Peru triggered quickly. In less than a month, the \r\nPeruvian was in Panama doing damage control. \"It is because of a publication of the \r\nGerman news magazine Der Spiegel<\/I> about Billingsley,\" confirmed Mossack \r\nFonseca's representative in Lima, M\u00f3nica De Icaza, in an email on her client's \r\ntrip.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n The \r\ndecision was to revoke the powers of attorney issued to Bundesdrukerei\u2019s \r\nrepresentatives. \"Following your request, please find attached drafts of the \r\nrevocation records of the Powers of Attorney issued to Joerg Baumgartl, and the \r\ndraft of the Special Power of Attorney issued to Joachim Gerhard Kammerer, all \r\ndated retroactively.\" So, at least on paper, this story would never have \r\nhappened if the dam that kept the millions of secrets of Mossack Fonseca had not \r\ncollapsed.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n (*) \r\nThis is a team work simultaneously documented and published by Armando.info in \r\nVenezuela and <\/I>IDL-Reporteros<\/A><\/I> in \r\nPeru, in the course of #PanamaPapers.<\/I><\/I><\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/PP-26.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\nThe Veil of Silence<\/h2>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/PP-27.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\nThe German Partner<\/h2>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-generator-for-wp\/admin\/src\/images\/PDF_Tray.svg\")
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