derwick associates

I know, I know, today's a Sunday, mothers' day in the UK, but the stuff in Twitter from @jescotet is just too good to ignore. Check out the following tweets:

Descifrado.com reports that Thor Halvorssen (my former boss at The Human Rights Foundation) has sued Derwick Associates (Alejandro Betancourt, Pedro Trebbau, Francisco D'Agostino and 25 others) in the 11th Circuit of Miami-Dade, Florida. Allegedly, high figures from chavismo could be involved in corruption. Derwick Associates has another pending lawsuit, in New York, filed by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich.

infodioLeaks continues to provide some truly amazing leaks about corruption in Venezuela. One of the first questions ever asked to Derwick Associates, when it became known that it had been gifted 12 contracts in non-bidding processes, was to produce copy of said contracts. After all, Derwick was believed to be a Venezuelan private company, run by Venezuelans, that had been contracted by Venezuelan State's institutions, and that had been paid with Venezuelan public funds.

Alejandro Betancourt is a chavista wunderkind. A 'pioneer and global entrepreneur' he seems to be preparing his move to Spain, considering the tough times in his native Venezuela. Given his worldwide 'stature' as a 'businessman, philanthropist, innovator, and financial wizard,' Mr. Betancourt’s PR team recently unveiled a new website: AlejandroBetancourt.Es (notice Spain’s TLD) to serve as his presentation card to the world.

Damaging corruption information keeps arriving at infodioLeaks. Check out the document below. Google "Rolls Royce Trent 60" and lots of different results will come up, though the one I like is this one: it's from Mark Alflatt, Rolls Royce's Director of Financial Communications, who in May 2009 wired a press release entitled "ROLLS-ROYCE WINS €70 MILLION TRENT CONTRACT TO POWER GERMAN POWER STATION". In it one can read:

The document below is a prelude to the sort of deals that the Venezuelan State, through its utterly corrupt officials (like BARIVEN's President Guillermo Arellano) made with the bolichicos of Derwick Associates: Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, Francisco Convit Guruceaga, Francisco D'Agostino, and Pedro Trebbau Lopez.

It doesn't look pretty for Derwick Associates. Not pretty at all. Readers may recall that former U.S. President's Special Envoy for the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, filed a RICO lawsuit against Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, Pedro Trebbau Lopez and Francisco D'Agostino (of Derwick Associates's fame) in New York in July last year. When reading the claim the first time I thought "this is a looong shot..."

In another hilarious chapter in the Derwick Associates saga (a company of twenty-somethings with no experience in the energy sector that received 12 power plant contracts for billions of dollars thanks to one of their school chums, who just-so-happens to be the son of the government minister assigning the contracts), the holding company they have in Spain has just changed its name. Now, the "powerful" American-sounding company that bought a €22.7 million hunting estate in Toledo and luxury apartments in Madrid, is to be called COMPAÑIA DE INVERSIONES AGRICOLAS TRIESTE SL.

Dear Derwick bolichicos, I know you must be desperately wanting to see the end of this Annus Horribilis. Mind you, in 2013 you have gone from cocky proxies of Hugo Chavez, persecuting and prosecuting his opponents, to pariahs. In the space of less than a year, you went from believing that you would get millions and destroy the reputation of widely respected Venezuelan businessmen, who made their names, wealth and businesses through actual work, to become perhaps the only billionaires in town worthy of near absolute contempt.

Been trying to get a clearer picture of the involvement of JP Morgan in laundering millions of dollars siphoned out of Venezuela by Derwick Associates. A source recently pointed me in the right direction, and so I found in New York property records' database documents that demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that JP Morgan bankers purchased property -as proxies- on behalf of Derwick Associates, while it also granted a $5.8 million mortgage on said property.