venezuela

Raul Gorrin is a thug. No question about it. But in the ecosystem of Venezuelan thuggery, he's not, by any stretch, the biggest, meanest, worst of them all.

The U.S. Department of Justice (finally) charged Claudia Diaz Guillen and husband Adrian Velasquez with money laundering on 30 October. Diaz Guillen and Velasquez were part of a larger money laundering network that included former head of Venezuela's Treasury Alejandro Andrade, and sidekick and facilitator Raul Gorrin. Andrade is the man who famously pleaded guilty to getting $1 billion worth of bribes.

Our interpretation of Nicolas Maduro's regime anti U.S. sanctions constitutional law (see pdf below) isn't verbose. In short, Maduro has vested himself with an instrument that does not exist in Venezuela's jurisprudence (constitutional law), cloaks it under ius cogens, to do whatever off-the-books business he sees fit, with whichever entity, local or international, in the most absolute obscurity. No authority in the land is to learn what, when, or how deals under it are done.

Count us among the suspicious, the incredulous. In early 2019, even before Juan Guaido declared himself interim president of Venezuela, we met with senior officials of the Trump administration. Very early in our meeting words to the effect of "we like Leopoldo" were uttered. I remember it vividly, having thought "oh man... where do we start?" For Leopoldo, before his puppet Guaido became a thing, was already, arguably, the most toxic politician in Venezuela. Alas that was the hope then.

Juan Guaido isn't very bright, that much is more than evident already. He's come up with a 'new roadmap', which is a consultation plan -with same useless politicos that have allowed Nicolas Maduro to lord over Venezuela, for a new plan, which will rehash / relaunch the old plan of "1) cese de la usurpacion, 2) gobierno de transición, 3) elecciones libres"... well, better to listen from the horse's mouth:

Hemos construido y vamos a exponer una hoja de ruta para enfrentar al fraude y salvar a Venezuela.

UPDATED - This site suffered the most relentless DDoS attack we've had to endure since we started reporting Venezuelan corruption issues in October 2002. Something must be happening somewhere, perhaps our investigations into PDVSA's sanctions-evasion antics and corresponding shipping data, which is quickly acted upon by our esteemed readers from U.S.

In recent days Citizens Lab published a report on Dark Basin, described as a "Massive Hack-For-Hire Operation". It's one of those interesting reads to keep up with techniques employed by criminal elements against journalists posting inconvenient truths.

Check this out: after picking Juan Guaido, the Trump administration placed a bunch of sanctions on Venezuela / PDVSA. Said sanctions regime put the fear of god on a number of international energy players that ended up leaving the scene. The objective was to remove Nicolas Maduro, but the riskier it got for established companies to engage in business with Venezuela / PDVSA, the faster the void was filled by nimble shells run by thugs eager to cash in.

The recent record of U.S. government intervention in Venezuela sucks. Is out with Operation Condor and Washington Consensus, in with putsch by tweet. Regime change nowadays is by betting on the wrong horse, siding with cabals of entirely useless allies, while continously overestimating charlatans and underestimating chavismo, which is the most formidable foe to have ever come out of Latin America. What the world needs, what the region and Venezuela, in particular, need is more Charlie Wilson and less John Bolton.

Trying to stay relevant in politics is quite difficult in the best of times and places. Imagine how it looks for those with such aspirations, when, in the middle of current pandemic, their area of expertise is a banana republic cum failed State submerged in an abyss of corruption, like crisis-ridden Venezuela. Case in point Francisco Rodriguez, who went from an advisory role in Venezuela's Congress, to academia, to earn a living talking up -in stressed bond circles- chavismo's trustworthyness and ability to service its piling debt.