Five years ago, dirty money stopped quieting in tax havens

Five years ago, one of the most eloquent images of the contradictions of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution emerged: a company named after the former chief assistant to Camp Hugo Chávez in the Seychelles, a tax haven in the distant Indian Ocean. And the Adrian Velasquez Figueroa, (a) Guarapiche. It was a special moment to highlight the hidden fortunes that Chavezmo has hidden in tax havens, and in this case the case of a retired army captain who was only 36 years old was transferring a fortune with his wife. Claudia Diaz Gilin, Who is also a former officer in the armed forces, was crowned treasurer of the National Trust after a meteoric career backed by the fact that he was a nurse to Commander Chávez himself.

It was April 3, 2016, at 1 pm in Caracas. As of that moment, 109 media from 76 countries stand out, among them Armando.info, They began populating a collection of well-preserved spades into the underworld of so-called tax havens. The so-called spread was Panama PapersUntil then, the project was kept a secret despite the fact that it had been under construction for more than a year. The mysterious So-and-so Who gave it to reporters in the newspaper Southgerman Newspaper From Munich, about 11 million documents were leaked from the archives of Mossack Fonseca, one of the largest offshore service companies in Panama and the world, moving the wheel of history. The International Federation of Journalists (ICIJ) is then incorporated in Washington, DC to turn the raw materials into a searchable base and also to coordinate media and correspondents from around the planet. Nothing will be the same again, neither in the practice of transnational collaborative journalism nor, most importantly, in the global debate over the underground economy of tax havens and illicit money flows.

Among the Venezuelan stories stood out Odomario Carroyo, Former director of the state oil company PDVSA, with companies in his and his family’s name in the British Virgin Islands; And also other companies in Panama on behalf of the former president of Banco Industrial de Venezuela, Leonardo Gonzalez DylanAnd so do communities
Smark Lopez In Barbados, which helped him establish a sound institutional structure until the United States in 2017 referred to him as the “first man” of Tariq Al-Aisami, Nicolas Maduro’s Vice President for the Economic Zone.

Special reference to the condition of the general Victor Cruz Weaver, In charge of the Bolivar 2000 plan, an aid program linked to one of the first corruption scandals of the Chavista era. But this topic wasn’t a cruel memory until his name appeared on the 2.6-terabyte space of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, from which the now infamous Panama Papers leak came out.

Cruz Weaver was detained on the night of 20 March 2018 at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Miquitia. Chavezmo’s public prosecutor, Tariq William Saab, announced that night that the Public Prosecution office had issued an arrest warrant and a red warning against him. This was the last time they came up with the case. Meanwhile, not a month passed in Spain when the authorities of that country arrested the auxiliary couple Adrian Velasquez and former treasurer Claudia Diaz.

And the judge of the National Court, Santiago Pedras, had agreed at the end of last year to release them temporarily with precautionary measures, while their extradition to the United States is being processed. It is an example of the sudden fortunes emerging these days in the Chavista of Venezuela, but more than that, the local plot of the Panama Papers is just a footnote in the list of consequences and effects the case has generated in five years. .