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London - The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published reports today, under the banner of "Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze". I must say that I welcome such efforts in exposing the multibillion dollar industry behind illegal movement of stolen public funds. It is an industry that has no territorial boundaries, or jurisdictional impediments of any sort. Despite prevalent Anti Money Laundering (AML) legislation in most of the developed world, the fact is, the world's "most reputed banks" have been, and are, ear-deep in money laundering and eager to continue circumventing laws to partake in the thriving business.
But when it comes to Venezuela, there's precious little in the way of investigations by non-Venezuelan investigative journalists. It may be due to the country being irrelevant, in the great scheme of things, but after more than a trillion dollars worth of income in the last decade, which has allowed for multibillion dollar scams, how come no one -apart from a handful of lone voices- seems interested in mapping out the enormous corruption racket going on?
To help future research, I am posting here some names and pictures that, I am sure, will surface in offshore investigations should well resourced organisations decide to focus its attention in that corner of the world.
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| Oswaldo Cisneros |
UPDATE: after posting this, ICIJ published a piece on the ponzi scheme set up by Francisco Illarramendi in the US. Nothing new really, as information about that case has been in the public domain for a long while. In fact, it would be interesting to question the evident conflict of interests of FTI Consulting (one stop shop for all Boligarchs reputation management issues) with the receiver. The interesting thing is that ICIJ is mentioning a big name in the article: Oswaldo Cisneros. The other Cisneros, Gustavo Cisneros, owns a cesspit. It will be interesting to see whether ICIJ has what it takes to enter those rabbit holes...
