Former Venezuelan Petroleum Minister Rafael Ramírez (left) with Hugo Chávez, in 2008, in Caracas AFP PHOTO / THOMAS COEX
The network of former vice ministers of the Government of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) investigated for charging commissions to companies in exchange for awards from the main state firm in their country, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), paid 30.6 million dollars to which Eudomario Carruyo was the financial director of this company between 2005 and 2011, according to the documents he has had access to from EL PAÍS.
Carruyo collected this money in the Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) between 2008 and 2010, when he was part of the leadership of the energy company.
The funds came through transfers from Nervis Villalobos, Venezuela's former Deputy Minister of Energy and Petroleum;
Diego Salazar, cousin of the former Minister of Energy and former president of PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez;
and Luis Carlos de León, a former lawyer for the oil company.
The payments were justified as advisory work provided by Carruyo to the group of ex-hierarchs and were closed through “oral contracts”.
The bogus consulting services were one of the schemes in the plot that PDVSA looted to justify its kickbacks, according to investigators.
A court in Andorra prosecuted Villalobos, Salazar and De León in 2018 for allegedly belonging to a network of 28 people that collected between 2007 and 2012 bribes from companies that were awarded millionaire PDVSA awards.
The plot hid its profits - 2 billion dollars - in Andorra, a country shielded then by bank secrecy.
Document know your client (know your client, in English) of the account in the Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) linked to the former financial director of PDVSA Eudomario Carruyo.
Carruyo received 30.6 million through an account in the BPA in the name of his Panamanian company Biford Investments S. A, where he appeared as a representative along with his wife, Nancys Jacibis Perozo de Carruyo. The former PDVSA director opened this deposit to bill alleged services from his Venezuelan engineering firm, Lugo Enterprise.
Thus, Carruyo received 10.4 million dollars from the Panamanian companies controlled by former Vice Minister Villalobos Lomond Overseas SA (5.5 million), Monterrey Management Limited (3.1) and Tristaina Trading SA (1.8).
Also, it received 15.1 million from Highland Assets Corp, a firm of Luis Mariano Rodríguez Cabello, alleged front man of Diego Salazar, nephew of former Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez.
And two million from an account in the BPA in the name of the Panamanian company Worldwide Traders Line S. A linked to Salazar and his wife, Rosycela Díaz Gil.
Luis Carlos de León, a former PDVSA lawyer, paid 2.9 million between 2009 and 2010 to Carruyo through Cano Navy Corp, his Panamanian company with an account in the BPA.
Family figurehead
The money from the plot reached the accounts at Carruyo's BPA in the form of internal transfers, a system that leaves no trace.
And after landing in the Andorran entity, it was transferred to other deposits of the former PDVSA finance chief abroad.
Thus, Carruyo transferred 20.1 million in June 2011 to an account in a Dubai bank controlled by his niece, the Venezuelan Katerina SP, 34 years old.
And it remitted 6.5 million in April 2010 to a deposit in a Swiss bank where it was listed as a beneficiary.
The former financial director of PDVSA told the entity that he decided to cancel his five accounts in the BPA after the appearance of this bank in journalistic information.
"[Carruyo] does not want to take risks," said the Andorran financial institution in an internal document.
The Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (Uifand) concludes in a July 2020 report that Carruyo used his niece Katerina SP as a front man in two accounts at BPA.
These are deposits linked to the Panamanian companies Welnut Overseas SA and Terrystone Foundation that channeled the millionaire flow of funds injected by the plot.
The politician's family member acknowledged in an affidavit that her uncle was the true owner of the funds.
Carruyo's ruse of using his niece in his accounts in Andorra was intended - according to the investigators - to prevent the bank from closing the deposits of the former director of the oil company due to his status as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP), a label to identify a public officials, officials or former leaders susceptible to receiving funds tainted by corruption.
Andorran researchers question the origin of the funds that Carruyo entered into the BPA and doubt that the engineering and civil works company that supposedly generated the money - Lugo Enterprise - had real activity.
They also criticize the alleged contracts with which the former executive of the oil company tried to justify his millionaire income.
"The work provided, the agreed payments, the amounts are unknown," the Uifand report states.
The investigations also sow doubts about the origin of the 30.6 million that landed in the constellation of Carruyo accounts.
The Uifand maintains that the former director used the account in the BPA where he collected this sum as a "bridge", a gateway to later derive the funds to other deposits.
Thus, his account in the name of the company Biford Investments S. A received 11.5 million in 2010 from the Chavista network and sent 11.2 million to another account of the former PDVSA director in the Andorran entity in the name of the Panamanian company Orfield Foundation SA
A report incorporated into the summary - investigations that started in 2012 and that now total more than 76,000 documents - frames the income in Carruyo's BPA in the movements of an alleged criminal organization that used to cash in its proximity to the Executive of the former president Chávez.
"Venezuelan politicians would have collected bribes in order to facilitate PDVSA contracts to foreign companies," the document indicates.
The thesis coincides with that presented by the Andorran magistrate Canòlic Mingorance in September 2018 in the order where she processed 28 members of this organization.
The resolution presented the network as a group made up of former Venezuelan leaders and officials of the state energy company that charged commissions of more than 10% from companies, especially Chinese, which were later awarded PDVSA contracts.
The whereabouts of Carruyo, which has been linked to various derivatives of the looting of PDVSA, has been unknown for years.
Ismael Oliver, lawyer for former Venezuelan minister Nervis Villalobos, defends that his client "has not committed any act of bribery, corruption or money laundering in any country."
And it specifies that the ex-chief "has not been convicted by any court."
"All the operations that Mr. Villalobos made in the BPA, its subsidiary Banco de Madrid or any financial entity were expressly reviewed and supervised by the banks' regulatory compliance department and are licit," Oliver responds to this newspaper by email.
However, the investigations indicate that, through a complicated skein of opaque accounts and instrumental companies –without activity- in tax havens such as Switzerland or Belize, the plot moved the flow of funds that went to Andorra.
The Venezuelan Prosecutor's Office estimated at 4,200 million euros the looting of the state oil company perpetrated by the network. Along with former Deputy Minister Villalobos, the organization included Javier Alvarado, the all-powerful former Deputy Minister of Energy and Petroleum and director between 2007 and 2010 of the National Electric Corporation (Corpoelec). An ex-president who is being investigated in Spain and the United States and who was arrested in Madrid in 2019 at the request of a Texas court, who claimed him for the alleged crimes of money laundering and conspiracy to launder. The investigations of the American judge are investigating a corruption case of more than 50 million dollars connected to the Venezuelan energy company.
An internal investigation of the current PDVSA managers determined that former directors of this firm defrauded the company, at least, 500 million dollars.
The method involved self-granting material purchase contracts to their own companies.
To do this, they allegedly rigged the tenders and laundered their loot in Spain.
Of 48,000 contracts examined between 2009 and 2015, a total of 2,562 went to companies owned by Roberto Rincón Fernández and Abraham Shiera.
PDVSA filed a complaint against both in Spain.
The complaint is also directed against Rafael Reiter, Javier Alvarado and nine other people.
The National Court processes the complaint.
Several of those investigated reside in Spain, where they have acquired millionaire properties.
investigacion@elpais.es
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