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PDVSA oil sales during Rafael Ramirez reign: $1.3 trillion USD

Last week I was asked to quantify the size of the loot at PDVSA during an interview. This site has been crunching some numbers in that regard. Whatever the approach, Rafael Ramirez's reign looks very grim. It could be owing to the fact that Ramirez was Minister of Energy and CEO of PDVSA -at the same time- for most of that period. That is, Minister Ramirez was responsible to keep PDVSA's CEO Ramirez in check, something entirely unfeasible.

PDVSA's oil sales between 2001 and 2016 were $1.305 trillion USD, net profit $93.1 billion USD (7%), while expenditure -described in audited financials as social contributions- $129 billion USD (~10%). Ramirez is on the record saying that while heading PDVSA, over $480 billion USD worth of transfers were made to the State ("Mientras estuve al frente de Petróleos de Venezuela, nuestra empresa fue capaz de captar y entregar al Estado más de 480.000 millones de dólares.") That's about 37% of total income from oil sales.

Highlighted in pdf* below, oil sales, transfers for social programs (expressed as "aportaciones para el desarrollo social / aportaciones y contribuciones al FONDEN"), and net profit. It must be borne in mind that while $1.3 trillion were being received, Ramirez and co further indebted Venezuela and PDVSA to the tune of, what, another $180 billion? $1.305 trillion + $180 billion = $1.485 trillion. That's 14 Marshall Plans; over three TARPs.

Can anyone reasonably doubt that this is THE largest corruption scandal the world has never heard of?

Perhaps financial experts can have a crack at unravelling total income, costs, and profit. All the data comes from PDVSA's financials. In any case, how many States owning oil conglomerates of PDVSA's size that had gotten such income are in Venezuela's destitute situation?

Ramirez was sacked from his U.N. diplomatic post in December 2017, though the structure he put in place in PDVSA lasted well after his departure in 2014. Ramirez is directly involved in mega corruption scandals in the U.S., Andorra, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.

*Please attribute infodio.com as source.

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