However, an investigation by EL PA\u00cdS and Armando.info<\/strong>, based on thousands of internal documents of the network, found evidence that at least one instance of the Mexican government could have acted as an ally of the network. As per papers of company Libre Abordo, it portrayed itself as a company designated by the Mexican government to carry out this type of transactions, and as a client of Segalmex \u2014the food security agency of the Mexican State.<\/p>\n\n\n In addition, documents in possession of both media and interviews with several sources confirm a relationship between young businessman Joaqu\u00edn Leal \u2013 at the apex of the plot \u2013 and the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximiliano Reyes Z\u00fa\u00f1iga. The number two of the Foreign Ministry says in his defense that, as part of his responsibility, it is essential to support \u201cevery Mexican company, regardless of its name, regardless of its political or partisan position.\u201d \u201cWe assume that the businessmen who approach us do so in good faith and wish to have better economic ties in the region,\u201d adds Reyes in response to this report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLibre Abordo was appointed by the Mexican government to join the humanitarian oil-for-food exchange program with Venezuela for the purpose of selling a variety of foodstuffs to be traded between both countries,\u201d the company assures in a corporate presentation prepared in January 2020, which is part of the documents in the hands of both media. In the presentation, the company created ad hoc by Joaqu\u00edn Leal for business transactions with Venezuela, explains that the agreement was conceived in a series of bilateral conversations between Caracas and Mexico City authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same presentation indicates that Libre Abordo reached an agreement with Segalmex, the government agency for food production and distribution. \u201cSegalmex receives instructions from the federal government of Mexico to continue with the humanitarian aid, aiming to benefit the people of Mexico and Venezuela,\u201d the document reads. According to Libre Abordo\u2019s version, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration instructed Segalmex to sell 210,000 tons of corn to Libre Abordo, destined for Venezuela. The amount coincides with the operation that Libre Abordo carried out in June 2019 with the state-owned Corporaci\u00f3n Venezolana de Comercio Exterior (Corpovex). Two contracts were signed to supply those tons of corn and 1,000 tankers of drinking water<\/a> in exchange for two million barrels of oil \u2e3aa two hundred-million euro operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another document from the electronic file obtained for this journalistic investigation adds up. In the search for clients willing to process the PDVSA oil that had been exchanged for food, in early 2020, Libre Abordo contacted Reliance, the Indian refinery. Apropos of the due diligence process initiated by the Asian company to certify its prospective new supplier, Libre Abordo submitted a letter dated December 16, 2019, with the letterhead of Segalmex, the agency that was to sell to this company the corn intended for Venezuela. \u201cWe hereby confirm that we have received instructions from the Mexican government to proceed with this deal,\u201d reads the missive that bears the purported signature of Segalmex\u2019s then head of Administration and Finance, Ren\u00e9 Gavira. \u201cThe corn will be distributed in three deliveries scheduled for the third week of January 2020, the third week of February and the third week of March.\u201d Sources close to the former official, who left office in June last year tangled up in corruption accusations, assure that the signature on the letter is not Gavira\u2019s and claim that it was forged by Leal and his collaborators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Libre Abordo also submitted proof of a bank transfer of December 11, 2019 to Segalmex for 330.6 million pesos ($15 million), as an advance for the delivery of the 210,000 tons of corn of the initial operation. The company that made the payment was Consorcio Panamericano SA de CV, a Mexican company in which Leal\u2019s grandmother is a partner along with alleged front men, who participated in other entities of the businessman. Libre Abordo assured in the emails sent to Reliance that Consorcio Panamericano granted them a \u201cloan\u201d to complete the transaction. When ask on this matter for this report, Segalmex answered that it \u201cwill not comment\u201d on the alleged transaction.<\/p>\n\n\n Those initial two million barrels negotiated in June 2019 turned to be at least 30 million barrels of crude oil in shipments that sailed between November 2019 and May 2020. According to emails in the possession of EL PA\u00cdS and Armando.info<\/strong>, Libre Abordo explained that the jump from two to 30 million barrels was due to the international fall in the price of crude oil, since the equivalence of the exchanged goods had changed to the detriment of the Venezuelan party. The Mexican company sought advice from law firms to complete the operations through bartering under the guise of \u201chumanitarian aid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transaction, which included corn and tanker trucks in exchange for Venezuelan crude oil, undertook to alleviate the misfortunes of the regime in Caracas. Pressured by the U.S. sanctions imposed on some of its top officials and agencies, such as the state oil company PDVSA and the Central Bank of Venezuela, the Maduro government was facing more and more difficulties to place its dwindling crude oil production in international markets and obtain foreign currency. A professed humanitarian swap seemed to provide a convincing enough fa\u00e7ade for the transaction to pass Washington\u2019s scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the schemes, in the end, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Libre Abordo and Joaqu\u00edn Leal for doing business with Venezuela, a measure announced a year ago, in June 2020. At that point, the Mexican FIU started an investigation to follow the trail of the 200 million euros. The investigation made little progress until last May 18, when the FIU filed a complaint to the Attorney General\u2019s Office requesting the seizure of a hundred or so accounts of Leal and Libre Abordo, as confirmed in this investigation. However, to date, there has not been any official pronouncement about the alleged agreements with Segalmex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two testimonials sources assured the authors of this investigation that Maximiliano Reyes Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, the number two of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, enabled the approach between Leal and Segalmex in 2019. As these sources confirmed, the first contacts took place at a meeting in Monterrey, capital of the State of Nuevo Le\u00f3n, with senior officials of the Venezuelan government, who visited Mexico and proposed to open a channel of institutional communication between the two administrations. That meeting was held shortly after the visit to Caracas of a group of Mexican businessmen, including Jos\u00e9 Adolfo Murat, Leal\u2019s former partner. Then, based on the documentation obtained, there was a meeting with Omar Abou Nassif, brother of a businessman close to Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, who raised the possibility of using the Chihuahua branch of Industrias L\u00e1cteas Asturianas (ILA, producer of the Reny Picot brand) as a supplier in Mexico. Sources close to Segalmex confirmed this information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the course of this investigative series, of which this report is a part, Joaqu\u00edn Leal and the Venezuelan government were requested to give their versions, but no request received a response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Administration of Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, of the National Renewal Movement (Movimiento de Renovaci\u00f3n Nacional \u2013 Morena), although leftist, has maintained an ambiguous position regarding the Venezuelan conflict since he came to power. He certainly avoided recognizing the opposition leader and president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaid\u00f3, as interim president, something that pleased Maduro, but at the same time he has helped to bring Venezuelan opponents out to give them asylum in Mexico. The relations of the Chavista<\/em> government and the Venezuelan opposition with the Mexican diplomacy are close and frequent, to the point that Mexico is emerging as the prospective venue for an upcoming negotiation between both parties to seek a way out of the political and humanitarian crisis that has become chronic in the South American country. As to President L\u00f3pez Obrador, who does not hold back his opinion on all kinds of matters at his morning conferences, has referred to Venezuela on very few occasions. Three days before the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Mexican businessmen, he said that he would be willing to collaborate with humanitarian aid if the government of Caracas required it. \u201cIt (the Venezuelan government) <\/em>has not made any request to us. But if it made a request pertaining a humanitarian need, we would act on it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mexico did not need to have a leftist government to act as one of the apexes of a surreptitious trade scheme with the Chavista<\/em> Venezuela.\u00a0Already in 2016<\/a>, under the administration of Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, of the once hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional \u2013 PRI), businessmen close to Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, such as Alex Saab, found in Mexico the suppliers<\/a> to buy tons of food that were sent to Venezuela in the CLAP boxes. In 2018, the then authorities of the Office of Mexico\u2019s Attorney General opened an investigation\u00a0against that business \u2014virtually on the eve of the elections won by L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2014 for finding evidence of poor quality products and overpricing in the shipments. However, the case resulted in only small fines<\/a> for the companies involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the potential involvement of a government entity and the fact that a senior Foreign Affairs official, Maximiliano Reyes Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, was aware of \u2013or perhaps even promoted- the business scheme, would assign an unprecedented level of commitment by the Mexican government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/14062021-01-700x544.jpg\")
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All Aboard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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