![]() PDVSA’s reliance on intermediaries surged in 2020, when the Trump administration expanded sanctions with the threat to lock out of the U.S. That is more than the entire foreign currency reserves held at Venezuela’s central bank.Īll the oil cargoes were sold on consignment at a deep discount owing to the sanctions, which have dissuaded more established traders from doing business with Venezuela. imposed economic sanctions in a campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro.Īn additional $13.3 billion, corresponding to 241 tanker shipments, is owed directly to the national government as a result of an October accounting maneuver by PDVSA that reassigned responsibility for collecting the unpaid invoices directly to the Maduro administration in lieu of cash royalties. Internal PDVSA documents obtained by The Associated Press show the state oil company was owed $10.1 billion as of August 2022 from 90 mostly unknown trading companies that have emerged as major buyers of Venezuelan crude since the U.S. against the anti-values that we are obliged to fight, even with our lives,” El Aissami tweeted to announce his surprise resignation as oil minister. “As a revolutionary militant, I place myself at the disposal of the socialist party leadership to support this crusade …. While Venezuelan authorities have not mentioned El Aissami as a target in the investigation, most of the shady transactions at state-run oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA occurred under his watch and while Asdrubal Chávez, a cousin of the late President Hugo Chávez, served as president of the company, known widely as PDVSA. already considered both of them fugitives from justice. He quit in the wake of the arrests, which included the detention of a close associate, Joselit Ramirez, who had been serving as Venezuela’s cryptocurrency regulator. While the fallout from the scandal continues, it already has felled one major power broker - Tareck El Aissami, the country’s oil czar. “It would be very difficult for even a much less corrupt state to implement all the necessary controls.” “These are two things that come together at the same time,” said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan economist who heads the Latin America energy program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. In a sign of the government’s desire to promote its anti-corruption crusade, state media this week were filled with images of the defendants dressed in orange jumpsuits walking into their initial judicial hearing.Ĭorruption has long plagued Venezuela - the OPEC nation was the fourth-most corrupt in the world in the latest rankings by Transparency International - but those in positions of power are rarely held accountable.Īnd when high profile arrests do take place, Venezuelans tend to view them as the result of a behind-the-scenes tug of war among rival heavyweights in the ruling socialist party, and not any impartial meting out of justice in a country where most institutions lack independence.Īn entrenched culture of corruption and the inherently opaque nature of trading illegal crude oil take malfeasance to another level. ![]() The purge began this month when authorities arrested 21 people, including business executives, senior officials and a lawmaker, as part of an investigation into missing payments for oil shipments. At the same time, regular Venezuelans are asking how more than $20 billion in proceeds from oil shipments seemingly vanished. They are among the dozens of obscure middlemen and go-betweens at the center of a new crackdown in Venezuela on corruption in the state-run oil industry that has government insiders scurrying for cover. ![]() for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs launder ill-gotten profits. Yet another belongs to a Spanish commodities trader indicted in the U.S. Another is a Hong Kong-based shell company created in 2020. ![]() CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - One startup lists as its address a small home in a working-class district in Venezuela’s capital whose owner has never heard of the firm. ![]()
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