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Imagine you are Victor Vargas, and you get up one morning to read a piece in Bloomberg Week that claims that your bank has $19.3 billion worth of assets, when in reality your bank's assets are $2.4 billion. Imagine you are Juan Carlos Escotet, and after you've

Finally, a major publication like the Wall Street Journal picked up on the gargantuan corruption racket that Derwick Associates has been involved in in Venezuela. In "Venezuelan Energy Company Investigated in U.S.
Derwick Associates Is Probed by U.S., New York Agencies for Possible Bribery, Banking Violations", the WSJ goes to town on some of the issues readers of this blog have been aware of for quite some time:

Insistent rumours had been making the rounds for some time about the alleged sale of El Universal, Venezuela's oldest and last standing independent newspaper. The sale, for an alleged €90 million, was confirmed this week. The new director is meant to be Jesús Abreu Anselmi, an obscure individual with a rather interesting past link to Gustavo Gomez Lopez's Banco Latino and, more recently, to turncoat -and former Gomez Lopez partner- Gustavo Cisneros.

It was only a matter of time, really. For those that haven't been following the latest chavista announcement about a "plot to kill" Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, here's a video of the proceedings (there are many more):

Back in September 2013, in the course of doing research and reaching out to contacts for a post on Luis Oberto, I got an email from a source saying that Oberto and Francisco Convit had bought an oil well for $45 million in Zulia.

Perhaps the best sign that things aren't going well in Venezuela is the sudden decision of powerful Boligarchs to flee the one place to which they owe their riches. In the last few months, we have learned about Juan Carlos Escotet's one billion-Euro bid and subsequent acquisition of Novagalicia in Spain.

Brazilians are meant to be incensed with Dilma Roussef for what they perceive as squandering public money and corruption in contracting construction companies for infrastructure projects related to the coming World Cup. The big winners are privately-held companies, among which Odebrecht, the one that has benefited the most according to Bloomberg. While I can't tell whether Odebrecht won those contracts from Roussef's government in open and legitimate bidding processes, as it should have, it is worth shedding some light on Odebrecht's operations in Venezuela.

An anonymous reader has sent the letter below. My reply will follow*.

Dear Alek Boyd,

I hope you will agree to publish this letter on your site without alteration.