{"id":65151,"date":"2021-06-14T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armando.info\/?p=65151"},"modified":"2021-09-07T21:23:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T21:23:47","slug":"they-offered-to-resuscitate-venezuelan-aluminum-production-but-rescued-a-mexican-consortium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armando.info\/en\/they-offered-to-resuscitate-venezuelan-aluminum-production-but-rescued-a-mexican-consortium\/","title":{"rendered":"They offered to resuscitate Venezuelan aluminum production but rescued a Mexican consortium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While Joaqu\u00edn Leal, Alex Saab and their partners applied since mid-2019 the virtual bypass to help the regime of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro to circumvent U.S. sanctions with the sale of Venezuelan oil and coal, they also tried to stretch the limits of their business with the Chavista<\/em> State even further, until they were at the doors of Corporaci\u00f3n Venezolana de Guayana (CVG). This conglomerate of core companies, was once a bastion in the production of iron and aluminum in the south of the country, but today, is part of the harvest of industrial debris left behind by the self-styled Bolivarian Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As gathered from a large file of documents, jointly obtained and processed by the Spanish newspaper EL PA\u00cdS and Armando.info<\/strong>, which has given rise to this series of investigative reports entitled \u201cMexican Bypass against Sanctions,\u201d a company unknown in the raw material production business, called Consorcio Panamericano de Exportaci\u00f3n (Copaex), proposed to the presidency of CVG a plan to \u201creactivate the aluminum industry in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project with CVG was another idea of Mexican businessman Joaqu\u00edn Leal Jim\u00e9nez, an ally of Alex Saab in Mexico, who activated a secret network for the trading of Venezuelan commodities designed from an original request of Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez to solve the inconveniences generated by the national 5-day blackout, in March 2019. By a subtle irony, it was precisely that electricity crisis what condemned the state-owned aluminum industry to inoperability\u2026 the electricity from Guayana \u2014a Venezuelan region south of the Orinoco River, rich in minerals and water flows\u2014 until then abundant, continuous and inexpensive, is one of the essential supplies for this industry to produce. To concentrate aluminum in its cells, Alcasa and Venalum, the two CVG companies engaged in the aluminum market, require around 1,500 megawatts per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blackout represented the coup de grace for an industrial park that in March 2019 reached a production equal to barely 10 percent of its installed capacity. It was the end of a decline that began in 2010, when the late former President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez ordered the aluminum industry to shut down in order to save electric power during the first great crisis of the electric utility, officially blamed on that year\u2019s drought and the drop of the level of the Guri dam, on the upper Caron\u00ed River, in the State of Bol\u00edvar, one of the three rivers \u2014together with Delta Amacuro and Amazonas\u2014 of the Guayana region. If the production of this conglomerate of mineral processing companies has never been the same since then, after the 2019 blackout, it fell to zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Blessing for Leal\u2019s sake<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The debacle, however, looked like a business opportunity for Leal, who was a rising star in Mexico, as a businessman in the electricity sector. He saw within reach the possibility of adding another Venezuelan raw material to his portfolio of products for the global market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the unknown Copaex, he proposed to the Venezuelan counterpart to make a one-off US$ 300-million investment to supply and transport \u201cgas-based power generation plants of 200-MV capacity\u201d which, together with an alliance with the Venezuelan state-owned Corporaci\u00f3n El\u00e9ctrica Nacional (Corpoelec), would be enough to activate within nine months 125 out of the 905 aluminum cells paralyzed since the blackout of March 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n