MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Corruption unleashed: Venezuelan government denounced for enriching itself with aid funds

The government of Nicolás Maduro would be supported with alleged illicit financing networks

According to a financial intelligence panel that met Friday in Cartagena, Colombia; in Venezuela, Maduro's government “uses food and humanitarian aid as a weapon for social control.”

A group of financial intelligence from the United States, Colombia, Mexico and Panama denounced at the meeting the existence of evidence that the Venezuelan government uses the food supply and humanitarian aid to exercise social control in the country.

These denunciations enter into a research framework that gave the initiative to a project against corruption, originated in the so-called Lima Group, for what they define as one of the lines of action that has derived from the work they have done since that international initiative.

The statement of the group that dealt with the case of Venezuela was specifically read on Friday by the director of the financial unit of Colombia, Juan Espinoza, and is entitled: Joint Declaration on the fight against Venezuelan corruption.

According to the participants, the government of Nicolás Maduro would be supported with alleged illicit financing networks, for which reason they agreed to expand international cooperation and the exchange of information on these cases, emphasizing the importance of international coordination to combat them.

Another complaint was the alleged theft of public funds through the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP), a fact condemned by the finance ministers of the four countries that attended the meeting.

The CLAPs are food distribution committees promoted by the Nicolás Maduro's government since 2016, in which the communities themselves supply and distribute the priority foods through a house-to-house delivery method. However, there have been numerous investigations on the subject, denouncing the existence of multi-million dollar businesses in which characters close to the Venezuelan president are present in food sales contracts not suitable for human consumption from abroad.

These committees have also been denounced as a politicized mechanism that excludes people who do not support the government.

Venezuela faces a serious political, economic and social crisis with shortages of food, medicine and hyperinflation that has caused the departure of thousands of citizens to Colombia and other countries in search of better living conditions.

Due to the low investment and interventions abroad due to lack of payments, the state-owned oil company, PDVSA threatens to disappear. Venezuelan oil production, once one of the strongest on the planet, is plummeting, with only 25 of the 50 oil drills operating that should be working to achieve acceptable production levels.

The destructive work of the company (PDVSA) was completed by the colossal corruption that in three decades volatilized 635,000 million dollars. Venezuela adds to these evils an external debt of around 170,000 million dollars.

PDVSA should maintain assets between 40 and 50 oil drills. General Manuel Quevedo, president of PDVSA since he was appointed by President Maduro this year, has ordered a solemn catholic mass begging God to work the miracle that none of the 25 drills still operative stops.

General Quevedo, within his “militar corny”, gave to the army chaplain several flasks with samples of crude from the Orinoco Belt, today called the Hugo Chavez Oil Belt.

On the other hand, the report “Opacity: the rule imposed by the high government” of the NGO Transparency Venezuela, stresses that silence has been fostered by the existence of legal instruments that violate or limit the right of access to public information; as well as the Judicial Power has restricted this right when issuing criteria that prevent citizens from having access to information.

Sebastián Astorga