<\/p>\n\n\n
That \r\nwas just the beginning of a larger business, according to new documents obtained \r\nfor this report. The contract signed between the firm of Hong Kong and \r\nCobiserta, represented by the then Army Colonel Jos\u00e9 Salvador Bol\u00edvar P\u00e9rez \r\n\u2014detained last April and investigated for possible acts of corruption, was not \r\nthe only one that Group Grand Limited achieved. Months later, the company sealed \r\nagreement 0086-2017 with the Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation (Corpovex), \r\nthe state-owned company that centralizes public imports, chaired by Major \r\nGeneral Giuseppe Yoffreda Yorio, for the supply of 11 million 500 thousand \"food \r\ncombos\" for the Corporation for Food and Product Services (Cuspal), attached to \r\nthe Ministry of Food. The invoices confirm the dimensions of the \r\nbusiness.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
In \r\njust one day, on September 29, 2017, Group Grand Limited quoted Cuspal nine \r\ncommercial invoices amounting to just over $ 113 million dollars for the sale of \r\ncanned tuna, pasta, corn flour, tomato sauce and mayonnaise, among other of the \r\neleven products included in the CLAP boxes that the Government sells at \r\nsubsidized prices among the poorest and that it uses as the flagship against the \r\nalleged \"economic war\" by local entrepreneurs. Moving the cash register like \r\nthat in a Venezuela marked by an uninterrupted contraction for the last four \r\nyears, the paralysis of exchange control - effective since 2003 - and the \r\ncollapse of its international reserves, is an accomplishment of just a few \r\ncompanies. For \r\ninstance, Alimentos Polar faces constant stoppages in its industrial plants \r\nbecause the Venezuelan government has failed to pay 130 million dollars for the \r\nimport of raw materials for the last three years. \"We have 449 applications for \r\nForeign Currency Clearance Authorization (ALD) awaiting response, which have an \r\naverage of 1,095 days in Cencoex. This implies that our international suppliers \r\nhave not been paid. Many of them have suspended credit lines to Venezuela for \r\nthese delays,\" says a recent report by the company belonging to Empresas Polar, \r\nthe largest private group in the country.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n The \r\nstory of Group Grand Limited, however, is a happy one. The invoices for January \r\nand September total 325 million dollars, but sources familiar with the CLAP \r\nbusiness say that the two contracts signed with the Venezuelan government exceed \r\n600 million dollars in exchange for 21 million combos. They also affirm that \r\nGroup Grand Limited also supplies other essential products to other state \r\nagencies. Everything has been possible without a factory, with few workers and \r\nwithout fixed headquarters, at least in Caracas, and in the strictest \r\nsilence.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n It \r\nwas only in last year\u2019s August that its name became public. At that time, \r\nProsecutor General Luisa Ortega D\u00edaz, dismissed by the Government of Maduro, \r\nsaid that the company was run by Colombian entrepreneurs Alex Saab Mor\u00e1n and \r\n\u00c1lvaro Pulido Vargas on behalf of president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \"We have conducted \r\nan investigation on the CLAP food bags delivered in Venezuela by a company \r\nregistered in Mexico under the name of two people. The company is Group Grand \r\nLimited and presumably belongs to the president of the Republic,\" Ortega D\u00edaz \r\nsaid to unleash a scandal.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t
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