ANDORRA
A judge in the European state of Andorra has charged two former senior Venezuelan Public Servants with corruption.
The two are charged along with 26 others with being part of a network of corrupt officials who received US$2.3 billion (A$3.2 billion) in bribes from companies in return for lucrative contracts with Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA.
The accused allegedly hid the money in an Andorran bank.
The bank, Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), is now defunct, after it was named as a “primary money-laundering concern”.
Judge Canòlic Mingorance charged the 28 defendants with taking kickbacks to facilitate contracts with PDVSA.
The list of those charged includes Diego Salazar, who is a cousin of former Venezuelan Minister for Oil, Rafael Ramírez, as well as two men who served as senior energy officials in the Government of former President Hugo Chávez, Nervis Villalobos and Javier Alvarado.
Fourteen of the accused are Venezuelan, with nine others from Andorra and five from Spain.
The network they were allegedly part of is thought to have taken the bribes between 2007 and 2012.
Prosecutors said the money was then laundered and hidden in the BPA before some of it was transferred into tax havens.
The US Treasury in 2015 accused BPA of helping organised crime groups launder money.
The Andorran authorities then seized its assets.
Judge Mingorance has been investigating the case since 2012.
She alleges that the accused “joined forces to take control of PDVSA’s public tendering as well as energy infrastructure projects run by PDVSA’s subsidiaries, Corpoelec and Electricity of Caracas”.
Former BPA bank officials have also been charged.
Critics of the current Venezuelan Government of President, Nicolás Maduro and that of the late Mr Chávez have long suspected that officials misappropriated Government funds.
An official at the US Treasury, Marshall Billingslea, has accused President Maduro of “rapacious corruption” and of operating “a kleptocracy”.
Andorra la Vella, 15 September 2018
