Corruption in Venezuela
According to Transparency International , Venezuela is currently one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
history
Colonial times
From independence to the Castro era
The Monagas brothers
The nepotism particularly manifested itself during the presidency of the brothers Monagas. In 1847, José Tadeo Monagas was known as the richest man in Venezuela. The corruption in the reign of the Monagas brothers was one of the reasons for the March Revolution of 1858.
Pérez Jiménez
In 1968 the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez was sentenced to four years for corruption. At the end of its dictatorship, the state had debts of 4,574 billion bolívares.
1958-1998
The sixties
In 1965 arms dealers Mertins and Samuel Cummings sold 74 F-84 series combat aircraft to Venezuela . 54 pieces of this batch were surplus stock they need for 46,200 US dollars had bought a piece and sold to Venezuela for 141,000 US dollars per share. They achieved net earnings of $ 6.926 million. This business was believed to be corruption.
Second reign of Carlos Andrés Pérez
In March 1993, prosecutor Ramón Escovar Salom initiated proceedings against the president for misappropriating 250 million bolívares, 17 million US dollars from then. The money is said to have been used to support the President of Nicaragua , Violeta Chamorro , and her Vice President, Yesseany Medina Parra. As a result, Carlos Andrés Pérez was removed from office by the Congress.
Chavez and Maduro
The Plan Bolívar 2000 , PDVAL and Barrueco affairs are among the first cases of corruption to become known in Chavez's time .
FOND
The FONDEN ( Fondo de Desarrollo Endógeno or Fund for Endogenous Development) is said to be another source of corruption. According to Reuters, billions of dollars in oil exports have disappeared without a trace. According to some experts, FONDEN is managed without any control by independent institutions. In August 2011, opposition MP Carlos Ramos Rivas stated that over US $ 29 billion had disappeared from FONDEN without the government providing an explanation.
The Serlaca company, which processes aluminum in Caicara del Orinoco , is said to have received hundreds of millions of dollars from FONDEN. It had used over $ 312 million in 2011, but only the foundations of one building had been completed.
FONDEN was also used to buy a new building for the Venezuelan Embassy in Moscow and a number of buses for the 2007 Copa de Fútbol de América. This was a violation of the FONDEN rules, according to which the funds could not be used to buy real estate or vehicles.
CADIVI
The foreign exchange restriction system that has existed in Venezuela since 2003 is a source of many corruption cases. In 2013, Ricardo Sanguino, chairman of the National Assembly's Finance Committee , stated that between 2012 and 2013 alone, the government had sold about $ 21 billion at a much cheaper exchange rate to several companies for importing “necessary products”, even though those products were never imported . Edmée Betancourt, then chairman of Venezuela's central bank, and Jorge Giordani, then finance minister, estimated that a third of the dollars subsidized by the government went to ghost companies.
Diosdado Cabello
Diosdado Cabello is accused of countless crimes of corruption and embezzlement, allegedly using Pedro Torres Ciliberto and Arné Chacón as straw men. Cabello has denied all allegations and after multiple denunciations by MP Julio Borges at a session of Parliament in January 2011, Cabello challenged him to present evidence of the allegations to the courts and request the removal of his parliamentary immunity.
He is accused of controlling the car company BERA, the shoe and sporting goods company RS21, the pharmacy chain FarmAhorro and the fish factories EVEBA in Cumaná and Tuna Margarita, as well as owning 43 properties. A German bank has informed a commission of the central bank in Venezuela that Cabello has an account with 21.5 million dollars. Even on the left there is criticism of Diosdado Cabello's machinations. When activist Thor Halvorssen Mendoza filed a complaint in a Miami court against the owners of the energy company Derwick Associates Corporation and a subsidiary in the United States, they were accused of pouring millions of dollars "under the table" to officials of the Venezuelan government. The prosecution confirmed that Diosdado Cabello received $ 50 million in kickbacks . The unfair actions of the accused were personally confirmed by one or more employees of Derwick (...). It's not the first time Cabello has been involved in illegal enrichment. According to records from the US State Department and the private investigation firm Stratfor, uncovered by WikiLeaks, the President of Parliament, Diosdado Cabello, is one of the great heavyweights of corruption in Venezuela. In addition to these serious allegations, there have been seventeen reports against him since 2009 with the Public Prosecutor General, which he has not yet contested, but the Supreme Court has rejected the second report. Cabello also has allegations from the Human Rights Foundation of alleged corruption and drug trafficking . On January 27, 2015, news was released accusing him of drug trafficking. A number of US government inquiries mention Cabello's role in the drug trade as the alleged head of a drug cartel of the senior generals of the Venezuelan General Staff .
Drug trafficking
The United States Treasury Department accused Venezuelan General Hugo Carvajal of drug trafficking. The general will of the FARC in cocaine smuggling have helped. In 2006 he is said to have coordinated a shipment of 5600 kilos of cocaine that was transported from Venezuela to Mexico. The Venezuelan government denied this. Carvajal was provisionally arrested in Aruba.
In March 2015, two nephews of the wife of the Venezuelan president were arrested by DEA officials in Haiti . You are currently charged with cocaine trafficking in the United States.
In early August, a US court indicted General Néstor Reverol with drug trafficking. He was demonstratively appointed the new interior minister by President Nicolás Maduro.
nepotism
There were often opposition charges of nepotism in the Chavez government. Chavez's father was governor of the State of Barinas. Jorge Arriaza, his son-in-law, had been a minister in various ministries until now. A cousin of Chavez, Argenis, is currently the chairman of the state oil company PDVSA. Chavez's eldest daughter is Venezuela's representative at the United Nations.
Nicolás Maduro Junior, eldest son of the President Nicolás Maduro , heads a group of special inspectors of the Presidency and the National Institute for Cinema, even if he had no previous experience in these areas. A nephew of Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores , is the nation's treasurer and vice president of finance for the state-owned oil company PDVSA . As early as 2008, unionists at the National Assembly complained that at least 40 employees were relatives or friends of Cilia Flores.
Diosdado Cabello , a former military man and temporary chairman of the National Assembly, has several family members in key government positions. His brother, José David Diosdado Cabello, is Minister of Industry and Chairman of the Tax Authorities. Diosdado Cabello's wife, Marleny Contreras, is Minister for Tourism. In June 2018 he himself became chairman of the "Constituent Assembly" set up unconstitutionally by President Maduro to disempower parliament and was also considered number 2 of Chavismus or Maduro's right-hand man during the crisis in January 2019.
Corruption index
According to Transparency International's corruption index, Venezuela was ranked 160th out of 177 countries assessed in 2013 and 169th out of 180 in 2017. On the American continent, only Haiti was placed on the list as an even more corrupt country in 2013. Venezuela has been America's most corrupt country since 2016.
Control bodies
According to the country's constitution, the Contraloría General de Venezuela, the auditing authority, is responsible for controlling public property. Since the death of the auditor Clodosbaldo Russián in 2011, Adelina González has been the agency's representative.
The General Public Prosecutor of Venezuela sets the criteria for political and criminal prosecution within the country. The opposition has on numerous occasions called for the resignation of the auditor and the Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz. On August 5, 2017, Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz was finally dismissed.
Influences that contribute to corruption
Scientists assume that corruption is promoted in an environment in which there is an unlimited monopoly of violence and there is a lack of suitable control mechanisms. According to Mercedes Freitas of Transparence International in Venezuela, the state organs in Venezuela have a far more dominant role than in other Latin American countries, as a result of which there is less transparency in the use and traceability of money and the lack of appropriate testing and control. Another problem is the high level of impunity for crime in Venezuela.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ranking by Transparency International (2013). ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2015 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Salcedo-Bastardo: Historia Fundamental de Venezuela. 11a Edición. Pág 425.
- ^ Salcedo-Bastardo: Historia Fundamental de Venezuela. 11a Edición. Pág 426.
- ↑ La Filosofía del Régimen Perejimenista (ULA).
- ↑ Ocho, Orlando: "La institución fiscal y el rentismo en el desempeño económico de Venezuela" Pensar en Venezuela (ONG). ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Feinstein, Andrew (2012): The Shadow World. Inside the Global Arms Trade. Pág 23-24.
- ↑ Informe revela que Alemania Vendio armas a países en conflicto (El Universal).
- ^ Carlos Andrés Perez convicted of corruption (El País).
- ↑ Special Report: Chavez's oil-fed fund obscures Venezuela money trail (Reuters).
- ↑ Government corruption has made billions of bolívares disappear (El Universal, in Spanish).
- ^ Carlos Rivas sobre FONDEN (El Universal). ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Bleeding by CADIVI (El Universal).
- ^ Evidence of huge rip-offs (The Economist).
- ^ En Venezuela toda la corrupción pasa por Diosdado Cabello, España y Rusia. ( Memento of the original from January 22nd, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Diosdado Cabello propone a Borges "despojarse" de inmunidad Parlamentaria.
- ↑ Diosdado Cabello responde a Aporrea: Que me expropien . 5th September 2013.
- ↑ Supuesta investigación que señala Diosdado Cabello sería jefe de cartel de narcotráfico.
- ^ Diosdado Cabello y the “Cartel de los Soles”.
- ↑ Cartel de los Soles: Las rutas del narco de Diosdado.
- ^ Venezuelan officers linked to Colombian cocaine traffickers (New York Times).
- ↑ Venezuelan ex-head of the secret service arrested in Antilles (Die Zeit). ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Dark suspicion of Maduro's relatives (NZZ).
- ↑ Reverol is the new interior minister despite drug lawsuit in the USA (Spiegel).
- ↑ Sem medo do nepotismo tres familias dominam poder na Venezuela (O Globo, Portuguese).
- ↑ The Lord of the Revolution (El Mundo).
- ^ Scandal over nepotism in Venezuela (El Tiempo, Spanish).
- ↑ El nepotismo de Diosdado (La Verdad).
- ↑ Los dueños de la revolución (El Mundo).
- ↑ NZZ, June 21, 2018, page 2
- ↑ Diosdado Cabello tilda de “grandes irresponsables” a quienes dirigen la UE , El Nuevo Herald, January 31, 2019
- ↑ Diosdado Cabello on RFI: "Nicolás Maduro will not give up" , Radio France International, January 31, 2019
- ↑ El Universal: Venezuela remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world (Spanish).
- ↑ Primero Justicia demands the recall of the Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz. In: El Universal , Caracas, February 21, 2014 (Spanish).
- ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Venezuela constitutional assembly fires chief prosecutor | DW | 08/05/2017. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (UK English).
- ↑ What makes Venezuela's corruption unique? (BBC).
