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The latest regarding novel ways for PDVSA to continue laughing at U.S. Treasury sanctions involves an offshore jurisdiction that was never featured among usual suspects: Labuan International Business and Financial Centre. Companies registered in Labuan are a bit like the old bearer shares structures of other jurisdictions: UBO records related to any given company are only to be made available to enquiring parties if the UBO allows it.

UPDATED 07/01/2022 - 16:16GMT - Have a look at the pdf below. It is an internal memo from Grupo Financiero BOD, dated 18 October 2016, signed by none other than Victor Vargas, founder and CEO of the group. No watermark has been added to preserve orginal metadata (author Carely Valentin). It relates to banking operations in Venezuela and abroad (money transfers).

It really is hard to figure the calculus here: "The United States continues to recognize the authority of the democratically elected 2015 National Assembly as the last remaining democratic institution and Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president.

This site took a dive into a report about Alex Saab's criminal activities in Ecuador.

Guess it would be fairly easy to write a feminist critique about guilty verdict, on counts of conspiracy to commit fraud and wire fraud, against Theranos' founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The jury's decision seems particularly harsh, considering main victims here are the bruised egos of the imbecilic investors that fell for Holmes' unbelievable bullshit. Borrowing from her business pitch, a drop of common sense would’ve avoided the embarrassment, but greed springs eternal and Holmes knew how to capitalise on it.

U.S. media has reported that Majed Khalil sued ($250 million - defamation) Fox News, Lou Dobbs and Sidney Powell. It couldn’t have happened to better people, honestly. However, Khalil just could not be further removed from the portrait of a much maligned, innocent and squeaky clean "Venezuelan businessman" his stupid Brown Rudnick counsel is depicting.

Starbucks recently opened a shop in Caracas. It was an instant hit. Social media got inundated with the news, as sure sign that Venezuela is back on the mend. In other news, many sources report that Caracas looks different. There are bodegones (delis) popping all over the place. Restaurants and night clubs are filled with beautiful people. Some avenues in East Caracas are lit again, as part of a beautification effort launched by local authorities. The greenback is king... 

On 10 December this site revealed Roger Carsten's visit to Caracas:

@StateDept’s @StateSPEHA flew to Caracas aboard “Ebola plane” #N173PA to negotiate release of some political prisoners of @NicolasMaduro