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Nelson Bocaranda, legendary Venezuelan journalist who scooped the global media with his precise and uncanny reports about Hugo Chavez's cancer (at a time when Venezuela denied the seriousness of Chavez's ongoing illness), reports today that a Frenchman by the name of Charles Henry de Beaumont (a.k.a. Charles Henry du Boscq de Beaumont) with Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique (CBH) in Switzerland, has been opening bank accounts for chavista officials.

Now that I have had time to go over the lawsuit filed by Otto Reich against Derwick Associates' "ChavezKids" (aka Bolichicos),  the first thing that caught my eye was to learn about a chap called Eduardo Travieso,  formerly with JP Morgan. I have evidence that Mr Travieso had more than just a professional relationship with Derwick Associates' executives.

Setty is reporting over in Twitter that Otto Reich, former U.S. Secretary of State for Latin America and Ambassador to Venezuela, is suing Derwick Associates for racketeering in the US. The targets are the unlikely trio of Alejandro Betancourt Lopez and Pedro Trebbau, the two principals behind Derwick Associates that are so familiar to visitors of this blog. The third person is Francisco D’Agostino, who is the son-in-law of Boligarch megabanker Victor Vargas from Maracaibo.

I first became aware of Claudio Osorio's existence in 2005.  He was a high-flying Miami businessman from Venezuela who was throwing money all over the place: Gloria Estefan, Bill Clinton, Jeb Bush, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and even the Obamas came knocking at his door looking for cash. Cash for political campaigns, cash for foundations, cash for fun. And Osorio, a businessman with a checkered past involving swindling investors in Switzerland, was happy to oblige.

Wikipedia (handle with care) defines it thus: "SUCRE (Spanish: Sistema Único de Compensación Regional, English: Unified System for Regional Compensation) is a proposed regional currency to be used in commercial exchanges between members of the regional trade bloc Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which was created as an alternative to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). The SUCRE is intended to replace the US dollar as a medium of exchange in order to decrease US control of Latin American economies and to increase stability of regional markets." A noble endeavor, some will say...

Hugo Chavez was a media product. When he got caught in 1992, leading a coup against democratically-elected Carlos Andres Perez, he was allowed to address the nation, live. His call to fellow putschists to depose arms and "por ahora" speech made him a national icon, instantly. Chavez knew, better than any politico in Venezuela, what control of the media meant.

There's a lot of talk in Venezuela these days about whether Edward Snowden is going to end up in Caracas, protected and supported by chavismo. Snowden, already famous worldwide for revealing how the US government spies on its people, said recently that Venezuela had his "gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless..."

Colombia's Ministry of Defence informed today that Roberto Pannunzi, a boss linked to Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafiosi was captured in Bogotá, in a joint operation between Colombia's Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Colombia's Ministry of Defence states in its report that Pannunzi identified himself with afake Venezuelan ID -on the name of Silvano Martino- when arrested in a shopping mall in the north of Bogotá.