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The weekend brought news of the extradition to the U.S. of Nicolas Maduro’s favorite associate, Colombian “businessman” Alex Saab. This week, Jorge and Delcy Rodriguez’s favorite mediator, Spain’s former PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, was indicted for: belonging to a criminal organisation, money laundering, misappropriation of public funds, documentary fraud, and of course influence peddling. For a 1% commission, Rodriguez Zapatero worked his charm at different institutional levels so that Plus Ultra, a Venezuelan airline belonging to another close associate of Delcy (Camilo Ibrahim Issa), would get €53 million worth of Spanish public funds.
The scandal has been long in the making. Spanish intelligence has been going over it for quite a few years, mapping out the vast network of corrupt Venezuelans that used connections to Delcy and access to Rodriguez Zapatero to basically steal public funds.
Nothing new there. Beyond providing a very detailed flow of how the operation was organised and orchestrated, including detailed instructions from Rodriguez Zapatero to set up a shell in Dubai so that bribe payments could be hidden and how he got paid through companies under his and his daughters’ control, the indictment does mention his involvement in crude trading, as a go between his criminal associates, Delcy, Chinese parties, and Alessandro Bazzoni’s partner Philipp Apikian (Swissoil Trading SA).
That much was unknown until now. Hopefully investigating authorities will pull from that thread, to determine whether Rodriguez Zapatero was another “rainmaker” for PDVSA.
Danilo Diazgranados gets a couple of mentions. Eudoro González Dellán, linked to the opposition and brother of megacrook Leonardo, is also mentioned as coordinator / mediator between Rodriguez Zapatero’s people and Edmundo González Urrutia’s people.
